Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 22 February 2018

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:00 am

Photo of David CullinaneDavid Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

A number of items concern me in the cover letter. Dr. Love has indicated that no further action is required because this report has been given to us. We are not going to circulate it, but it has been given to us. The difficulty is that we will have a report from the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General. We do not know what that report will contain. Therefore, it is not right to say that at this point no further action is required.

I am even more concerned about a second point. It states that on the basis of Dr. Thorn's findings, the HEA is satisfied that no further action is required in this regard apart from the need for UL to implement fully the recommendations made by Deloitte. I have a difficulty with that. Deloitte should not set down recommendations. It can publish a report, but at some point we will have our own report which will deal with some of these issues. It is up to policymakers to set down what changes should be made and not Deloitte. I have no difficulty with Deloitte publishing a report setting out the problems. I have a difficulty if the university and the HEA are suggesting that the recommendations to fix problems will come from Deloitte. I do not accept that at all. Given that this will be part of our work programme, I am sure we will come back to it because we will have the special report from the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General. We will have them back in here at some point. This letter is trying to bookend the issue by saying we have this report, there are recommendations from Deloitte and everything is okay, but it is not.

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