Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will note and publish it but will hold over the discussion on it. I ask members to keep it to hand because it is a valuable source of information for us in terms of our work. I thank the Comptroller and Auditor General for that document.

Category C is correspondence from or in relation to private individuals and any other correspondence.Item No. 827C was held over from our last meeting.It is from Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll, Secretary General of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, providing information sought by the committee on the foal levy and impediments to basing the levy on the actual amount paid by the breeder rather than a standard nomination fee. We will note and publish that and provide a copy to the person who wrote to the committee on the matter.

Nos. 833C and 858C are items of correspondence from the last few weeks from the individual who raised the issue of teachers who are not State employees but who are being paid by the public purse. The items in question are copies of correspondence with the Taoiseach on the matter. Given the repetitive nature of the correspondence, I propose we direct the clerk not to circulate further items on which we are copied in relation to this matter. Documents are being supplied to this committee which are also being sent to the Taoiseach and others. We are not being asked to do anything with those documents. It amounts to a lot of correspondence and the issue has been raised with other people. It is not an issue that we can deal with directly so we will direct the clerk not to circulate any further correspondence from this individual on this particular issue.

Item No. 837C (i) (ii) and (iii) is correspondence, dated 23 October 2017, from an individual who made a disclosure to the committee in relation to the appointment of a person to receive protected disclosures in the Department of Employment and Social Protection. I understand that there have been other communications from the individual. I propose that we hold over all of these communications and that we consider them all together in coming weeks. This person has sent a lot of documentation to us.

Correspondence No. 843C, dated 25 October 2017, is from Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll, Secretary General of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine providing an update, as requested by the committee, on the case of a particular individual and his herd. The matter remains sub judice and has not been progressed by the individual in question. I propose that we send the individual a copy of the correspondence and advise him that it is up to him to progress the matter further through the legal process that has been initiated. If the individual has initiated legal proceedings he cannot come to us and ask us to operate in parallel to such proceedings. It is one or the other and given that the legal process is still in existence, I propose that we write to him accordingly on that matter.

The next item, No. 846C, is correspondence dated 25 October from Mr. Hubert Loftus of the Department of Education and Skills providing a clarification in relation to the Education and Training Board Ireland, ETBI. The Department provides funding to the tune of €168,000 to ETBI for which it has a service level agreement. We will note that. We thought that ETBI was not funded by the State but that is not the case. It gets a small proportion of its funding from the State.

The next item, No. 848C, is correspondence dated 25 October 2017 from Deputy David Cullinane in respect of Connect Ireland and IDA Ireland and the criteria used for assessing job creation. The Deputy raised this matter last week and asked that the secretariat follow it up with a letter to IDA Ireland. Does he wish to comment on this now?