Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are joined by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr. Seamus McCarthy, as a permanent witness to the committee. He is accompanied by Ms Patricia Devlin, the deputy director of audit in his office. Apologies have been received from Deputies McDonald, Cassells, Aylward and Farrell. The first item on the agenda is the minutes of the meeting of 15 February 2018. Are they agreed? Agreed. The next item is matters arising from the minutes. I have one question in this regard. We wrote to the HSE a week or two ago about salary overpayments. Has any response been received? I understand we will have a reply to that next week. That is grand. It may or may not be a significant item. We will wait and see. We will move on to correspondence received. We have some correspondence today.

The first item of correspondence is No. 1105A, briefing material from the Revenue Commissioners for today's meeting. We will note and publish that.

No. 1107A is briefing material on corporation tax from Dr. Brian Keegan of Chartered Accountants Ireland for today’s meeting. We will note and publish that and circulate it to the Committee on Budgetary Oversight and the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach, both of which may also have an interest in it.

Under category B, correspondence from Accounting Officers or Ministers and follow-up to previous meetings of this committee, No. 1081 was received on 12 February last from the Higher Education Authority. It comprises a follow-up review report, carried out by Dr. Richard Thorn, regarding certain matters and allegations relating to the University of Limerick. We mentioned this last week. Dr. Graham Love has requested that the report be dealt with confidentially and that it not be published. He has also mentioned that there are three related ongoing High Court actions. Having checked with the Office of the Parliamentary Legal Adviser here in Leinster House, we have circulated the report. I propose that we will respect the request for confidentiality and therefore will not publish it. The report is available to members but is not being published. I ask members not to publish or circulate it by any other means. We will note the item for now.