Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would like to put a couple of things on record about this. The gentleman in question also wrote to me requesting that I recuse myself because of what he determined as my long association with the college. To me, the implication of his correspondence was that a partiality or conflict of interest might impair my fair adjudication of any evidence or correspondence that this committee might decide to consider. I wrote back refuting this and explained that I do not intend to recuse myself or disqualify myself from consideration. My association with St. Angela's College is that my father was a board member in the 1990s, which long predates these matters, and there is a family member on the academic staff, which again would have no relevance to this matter. I do not intend to recuse myself because of that.

In my work in the Oireachtas over the years, when the Sion Hill home economics college in Dublin was being closed, I strongly advocated that it would come under St. Angela's remit and that it would deal with the Sion Hill students. This subsequently happened. More recently I have lobbied during the merger process. St. Angela's College was always a constituent college of the National University of Ireland Galway and it is now in the process of being fully merged with NUIG. There was an issue around staff as they came in. Even though many of the St. Angela's staff held PhDs and are fully qualified, NUIG proposed to take them on as university teachers rather than lecturers. This would obviously have had implications for the staff in terms of their promotional prospects. I certainly advocated in this and it was successful. There has not been, however, any involvement by me or my family in the issue that is before the committee this morning.

In consideration of the correspondence sent to Deputy Catherine Murphy, I agree fully that there are matters to be considered. It alleges the misappropriation of public funds for uses other than their intended purpose. It would be appropriate that this gentleman and representatives from St. Angela's College would appear before the committee, or at the absolute minimum we would seek clarification and comment on these issues from them as a matter of urgency. I hope that this proposal is acceptable to the committee members because I resent the implication in the letter that in some way I have an association that might impair my fair adjudication.