Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In the meantime, there is a clear signal to the two Departments that the information should be provided before this day week or the Secretaries General will be here in person the following week. That is the template we are setting out from this point forward.

A significant amount of correspondence has been received since the last meeting and we will go through it as efficiently as we can. Category B is correspondence from Accounting Officers and other items for publishing. Correspondence item No. 963 is carried over from the last meeting and regards information on ETBs from the Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills. We have received a considerable amount of information, which has been circulated. We will come back to the third level sector. Is it agreed to note it? Agreed.

Correspondence item No. 973 was also held over. It is from the Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills and relates to the terms and conditions of employment of State employees, in particular teachers who are paid but not directly employed by the State. Is it agreed to note it? Agreed. Members are free to use that information as they see fit now that it has been published.

The next item is correspondence item No. 976, which we held over from the last day. It is from Ms Angela Black, chief executive of the Citizens Information Board and is dated 8 December 2017. It relates to information requested by the committee regarding the re-structuring of Money Advice & Budgeting Service. We held that over because Deputy Aylward, who raised the issue, was not in attendance. However, all members have received the letter in the past day or two. There is a very final decision on that. The letter is in the public arena and there has been political comment on it. At this point, we will just note that correspondence.

The next item is correspondence item No. 986 from the HSE, which provides a substantial amount of information related to the Deloitte report on the cost of care incurred by the service provider in the Grace case. I want to get one aspect of that out of the way. A journalist has made a freedom of information request. We have asked some similar questions of the HSE. Obviously, the documentation being provided by the HSE is part of the freedom of information request. There is a cross-over between what we have been requesting and our correspondence. We want to get formal clearance because the HSE has asked if it can release our correspondence under a freedom of information request. That is automatic but we have to agree to it. There is a reference to a document on this topic, which I note is approximately 400 pages, which I have not examined. We will be careful not to reopen the Grace case with a 400 page document.