David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to relate this to the previous topic. The Chairman finished by stating that none of us in this committee would accept that the Deloitte report into the HEA was truly independent and other members have spoken about the process. That process is used repeatedly, not only by the HEA but by other organisations. At what point do we stop, reflect and look at what level of independence there is when these type of issues arise? I am not persuaded, for all sorts of different reasons which we do not have the time to go into today, that many of the reports which have come before us were truly independent.

On this issue of the information we received, it would be useful for us to look into the education sphere, particularly the third level sphere, at the amount spent on auditing, consultancy fees, legal fees, reporting, independent reports or otherwise, and then conduct a mapping exercise in terms of which organisations and companies provide the service because we have seen audit companies conducting so-called independent reports into organisations from which they have already received funding to audit. The function of such companies, as auditors, is to make sure that everything is okay. If they were the auditors, how can they go in and be truly independent and try to find mistakes? It is rife with all sorts of conflicts of interest.

Surely the HEA has a role in the significant amount of money that is spent on legal, consultancy and reporting. There is a massive issue here in terms of governance. I do not know how much the HEA costs the State but I would imagine it is a great deal and it has a large staff.

I want the committee to come back to this. I would imagine that more of these roles could be fulfilled in-house. Is it too quick to outsource much of this at a cost to the State? That, in my view, is clearly under our remit because it relates to value for money. It relates to whether or not we have good governance procedures within the third level sector and the HEA and whether the HEA is doing its job.

I propose that we look at that. Some of this information is relevant and maybe I will write to the clerk to the committee and look for a more detailed breakdown. There is the auditing, which is the internal audit, and the statutory auditing, which needs to be done by the HEA, and then by the constituent colleges. The total expenditure by all the third level institutions, the HEA and the Department of Education and Skills on auditing, consultancy and legal is significant.

It would be a good piece of work for us. There may be lessons to be learnt and recommendations to be made in terms of how we improve, save money, and get better governance and more independent reporting out of it.