Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This committee has to pass the motion requesting the debate next week, following which it will be sent to the Business Committee. We will deal with that motion next week. The Department of Finance has already agreed to the debate. It will probably take place on a Thursday evening, which is when committee reports are usually dealt with. It is useful to have a debate on the issue in the Oireachtas, particularly for this committee in terms of the amount of work it has done on NAMA.

The next item is recommendation No. 5, which is a general recommendation rather than one specific to the Departments. It provides that the chairpersons and boards of every public body be asked to ensure that their financial statements are submitted on time. This has been accepted by Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform. Good progress is being made in this regard.

Recommendation No. 6 is that the appropriation accounts be re-appraised and that additional notes be provided with the accounts identifying sectors and outlining expenditure on all public organisations. This is accepted. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is currently examining the layout of the appropriation accounts with a view to enhancing the information provided to assist the readers of the accounts. There have been some improvements this year in regard to the listing of all of the organisations under the remit of each Department, which we never had before. Having the information Vote by Vote is not only great for the committee, it is good for everyone else. We will monitor the layout of the reports each year.

The final recommendation is that the engagement of consultants or professional advisers for any public contract should have a time limit attached. Open-ended contracts are an issue because we cannot prove value for money if there is not a regular retendering process. This recommendation has been accepted in principle but as what is proposed does not always happen we will continue to monitor the public contracts.

We have completed our discussion on several months' of last year's work. Many of our recommendations have been accepted and implemented. We are seeking further information on the ones that have not been accepted. We are also seeking verification as to whether additional information is being sought from various Departments on a number of the recommendations that have been accepted.

We move now to correspondence received in the last week. Correspondence 1682 is from the chief operations officer of Teagasc providing follow-up notes requested by the committee at the meeting with Teagasc a couple of weeks ago in regard to advisory fees, regional analysis of viable farming, increasing financial charges, a comparative note on pay and pensions, the percentage of land owned by Teagasc that is in forestry, details of consultancy costs and a breakdown by county of farm debt. Is it agreed to note and publish this correspondence? Agreed.

Correspondence 1683 is from Mr. Niall Cody, chairperson of the Revenue Commissioners, providing follow-up notes requested in regard to forecasting tax receipts. Is it agreed to note and publish this correspondence? Agreed. The Revenue Commissioners are scheduled to appear before us next week to discuss two chapters. We will ask Revenue if it can also deal with the Vote at next week's meeting. If it can, it would save it a further visit. If not, we will deal with the Vote separately. When it comes to Revenue, there are four or five big items that it might well be capable of dealing with in one meeting.