Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will consider it next Thursday. If the report is not here by tomorrow evening, they are to be here in person next Thursday. The time is to be arranged because representatives from HIQA will be coming in and we might have to move the schedules an hour either way. It is a bit early. We cannot just sign off that. That is the report on the Grace case.

We come to correspondence from private individuals and other correspondence. No. 500C was held over from the previous meeting. It is correspondence dated 15 May 2017 from an individual regarding evidence relating to an ongoing dispute between North Meath Community Development Association and the HSE. The matter has been before the committee on several occasions and at the meeting on 25 May 2017, the committee came to the view that the matter was outside its remit but agreed to review the correspondence that had been sent to the Department of the Taoiseach in 2016. The secretariat has reviewed this correspondence. When the previous correspondence raised the matter with the Department of the Taoiseach in January 2016, it did not request any specific action. Since then the matter was reviewed by the Department of Health, which concluded it was not appropriate to intervene in an HSE operational matter. In March 2017 we wrote to this body, enclosing correspondence from the committee from the Minister for Health, to convey the position of the committee that this is ultimately a contractual matter and that the committee cannot provide further assistance on the matter. We should acknowledge efforts by the HSE to protect taxpayers' money in dealing with such contracts. I propose that we write a further letter to reiterate that the matter is outside the remit of the committee and the committee's consideration of this matter is now closed. Is that agreed? Agreed.

The next item is 698C, dated 12 July from Deputy Catherine Murphy requesting the committee to include an upgrade on the www.jobsireland.iewebsite undertaken by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection in the top six the committee may choose to examine in our work programme. Can we hold that over until we discuss our work programme, which is the next item on the agenda?