Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I know but we are not letting it go. We will come back to this. A letter is going out on the issue on which we will follow up.

Correspondence No. 1767 B is from the clerk to the Committee on Procedure, dated 30 November 2018, forwarding a complaint on matters raised by the committee in advance of the recent presidential election. The complainant believes the committee raised the matter of presidential expenses in order that it would become an issue in the election and be used as a weapon to damage the chances of the incumbent being re-elected. As Chairman, I reject that entirely. We will note and publish the item.

We have not been asked by the Committee on Procedure to respond to that letter, but we may choose next week to respond or to note and publish it. If it identifies the private citizen who has made the complaint about the Committee on Public Accounts we will ensure that his or her name, or any information that could identify him or her, is redacted but I think we should publish the substance of the complaint. We are big enough to take complaints on the chin and we will not publish them. People often make remarks that we may or may not agree with. I will ask the secretariat to scrutinise the letter to ensure there is nothing therein which if published would identify the correspondent. I would like the substance of the complaint published even though it is not flattering from the committee's point of view. We may decide to respond or not, as the case may be, next week.