Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 27 September 2018

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:00 am

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

Yes. I have raised this issue half a dozen limes. When we had Dr. Love here before us, he spoke to the committee in private session about this issue and explained some of the reasons the report had been delayed. I am beginning to get very frustrated because I do not think we can tolerate a situation where an independent report has been produced on institute of technology and simply because mistakes were made by the HEA, as it seems there were, there is no report coming out at the other end. The letter from the TUI is a cry for help and assistance from the many people who came forward in the institute at the request of the person carrying out the report who wrote to all staff members asking them to come forward if they had any information and meet him in confidence and they did. I received a lot of protected disclosures and never put them into the public domain. We went through the structures appropriately and brought in the Accounting Officer. We put questions to the HEA which put a process in place. We were to produce a report which was to be published last September. One year on there is no sign of it. There are very wealthy and influential people who have a right to defend themselves if they believe they need to legally challenge the report.

I have no difficulty with that but it should not hold up the report forever and there is no sense at this point that we will ever get a report. That is unacceptable because there were strong findings in that draft report according to the information that I received. How can we have a situation where there are strong findings against the institute and practices within the institute after a thorough examination only for the report to not come out? People have come forward to tell me that they are now going for interviews for promotion and they are concerned about whether they will get the promotions. There is a lot at stake here in terms of the reputation of the institute and the protection of individuals who came forward and because the HEA did not carry out due diligence in compiling the report, we are constantly told that it is being pushed back to the extent that we may never see it. That is not acceptable and I do not know how we will remedy the situation but it must be remedied because we have to get a report, we have to get answers to the questions we put and we have to do justice to the people who came forward.

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