Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Okay, that is fair comment. As Chairman, every Wednesday I receive a telephone call to confirm what the committee will discuss in the Thursday meeting and various journalists are able to read for me verbatim from the information circulated to committee members, some of which I have not even had an opportunity to read at that stage. There is a serial leaker in the committee, full stop. I do not know who it is and I am not suggesting who it is, but there is one. There has not yet been a week that a journalist did not telephone me to read out correspondence that had not yet come before the committee. It is remarkable. Yesterday, another committee launched reports and I asked the various chairmen how they dealt with their reports and draft reports. They told me they had never had an issue with leaks in the other committees so it is germane to some members of the Committee of Public Accounts. I am just making that general observation.