Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes, so the guidelines have been issued to the various organisations. This protected disclosure will come up again. I know of another item of correspondence raising the protected disclosure issue for next week as well, so this protected disclosure issue will come back and we can discuss it further. We have already agreed to write to the Departments of Public Expenditure and Reform and Education and Skills today asking them to comment on this issue of people internal to the organisation who may not be considered independent or may be named as part of the disclosure that has been made and the appropriateness of those individuals examining matters when they might be personally connected with some of the issues that have been raised in the statement. We will ask for a response from the two Departments specifically on that issue and we can take it from there when we get a response.

No. 1302B, from Mr. Maurice Buckley, chairman of the Office of Public Works, OPW, provides an information note requested by the committee on the advices given by the OPW to the Department of Justice and Equality and the Probation and Welfare Trust. We will note and publish this. We have discussed it before.

No. 1309B, from Ms Oonagh McPhillips, Acting Secretary General at the Department of Justice and Equality, provides a follow-up note on a number of matters, including the probation service building; costs associated with two protected disclosures; the numbers of people accommodated in commercial and State-owned direct provision centres; sections to be commenced in the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act; the Bridge Project; and the process and systems to raise matters with the Minister. We will note and publish this. There is a lot of documentation there. If members want to raise it again next week, they should feel free. We will note and publish it for today.

No. 1320B, from Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú, Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills, provides an explanatory note on Trinity College Dublin, TCD, and the inclusion of audit certificates with financial statements. We will note and publish this.

No. 1328B, from the State Claims Agency, dated 22 May 2018, provides follow-up to our meeting two weeks ago. I consider this a very serious item of correspondence. It arrived here just yesterday evening, and I arranged for hard copies to be given out to members even though there are 40 pages in it. The issue is very serious. I do not want to reopen the CervicalCheck discussion at the Committee of Public Accounts - not at the moment anyway - but there is a very difficult issue highlighted in this letter that the committee needs to deal with very strongly. I refer to the addendum on page 2. The State Claims Agency was asked by the committee for "A note with the details of the interaction with CervicalCheck and the [State Claims Agency] regarding how the communication process to the women affected would operate". I wanted to read that last section into the record. This is the cover letter.