Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will ask those questions of the Department in writing as a result of this.

The next item of correspondence is No. 1487 B from Ms Carol Boate, the regulator of the national lottery, providing information requested on the mechanisms to deal with unclaimed prizes and clause 6.9.2 of the licence to operate the national lottery. Does anyone want to comment? Generally, she says unclaimed prize money can go back into promotion of the national lottery and other lottery games. I do not know whether sufficient detail is given, but we will note and publish that. If any member wishes to pursue the matter separately, he or she may do so.

The next item is No. 1488 B from Mr. Derek Moran, Secretary General of the Department of Finance, providing information on staffing requests from the Tax Appeals Commission and the response from the Department, and information on other resourcing requests. We will note and publish this.

No. 1585 B is from the Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, advising that he has commissioned an urgent staffing, governance and operations review of the Tax Appeals Commission by an independent reviewer. We will await the outcome of the review. In the meantime, we will note and publish the correspondence. Essentially, what he says is that the Department received a very comprehensive request for additional staff. It says it would involve doubling the budget for next year if it were to be fully agreed to, as a result of which the Minister has commissioned a staffing review. I think we will get that fairly quickly, so we will note and publish both items and ask the Department to keep us updated. We will keep it on our list of matters to follow up with the Department if it does not come back to us.

The next item is No. 1489 B from Mr. Maurice Buckley, chairman of the Office of Public Works, regarding accommodation for the Tax Appeals Commission. He takes great issue with what he believes was a misleading impression given by the Tax Appeals Commission that the OPW had forced the commission to move to substandard accommodation. We will note and publish this. We can discuss the letter with the OPW when its representatives are here in two weeks time, and there will be many other issues for the OPW.

The next item is 1490 B, which is from Mr. Stephen Blake of the Government accounting unit of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, enclosing a minute from the Minister in response to our periodic report. We will take note of this but we will not complete our work on this yet. Whether there are two or three reports back on our previous periodic reports, we will just hold them all over until everyone has had an opportunity to study the full contact.