Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are joined by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr. Seamus McCarthy as the permanent witness to the committee. Apologies have been received from Deputy Pat Deering. The minutes of the meeting of 20 September have been circulated. Are they agreed? Agreed. There is a small change to be made to the minutes of the meeting of Tuesday, 25 September, which we will clear next week. There are no matters arising from the minutes.

I move to correspondence. There are no external witnesses before the committee today. We are using this as an opportunity to consider correspondence received since the meeting in July, which numbers well in excess of 100 items some of which are routine. People who have an interest in certain matters should watch proceedings as some of the items that we will publish today contain very interesting information. We will not get to discuss them all in detail, inevitably some will have to be held over, but we will attempt to clear as many as we can. This meeting should conclude at the latest by the time the series of votes comes before the Dáil and so we would not return in the afternoon. I propose that anything that is not dealt with is held over.

The first item is No. 1479 B from Dr. Graham Love, Chief Executive, Higher Education Authority, dated 11 July 2018 providing the following information requested by the committee. It is a comparative note on the financial position in terms of annual deficits-surpluses of all institutes of technology; and an update on the financial position of the accounts of Waterford Institute of Technology which has a substantial deficit of €4.4 million. Dr. Graham Love has indicated that he will leave his post soon. At last week's meeting we asked him to come before the committee before he leaves the post at the end of October. That request is in the system and we are waiting for a date. We are keen for that meeting to happen.