Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The three institutions appearing today will again come before the committee, along with representatives of the Department, as soon as the financial statements for the period ending September 2017 in the case of UL and 31 August 2017 in the cases of IT Sligo and Waterford Institute of Technology are finalised. We expect representatives of each of the institutions to appear, along with Mr. Ó Foghlú, because somebody must ensure this does not continue. There is no point in the public electing us to do our work on the Committee of Public Accounts, the committee making a recommendation a year and a half ago and life carrying on. That will not happen under my watch as Chair of the committee. We have done tremendous work in getting the education and training boards and other organisations to get their accounts up to scratch. I thought the institutes of technology and universities would be more efficient and effective because the ETBs went through significant restructuring through the years. We want the level of efficiency that is now in the ETB sector to be replicated in the institutes of technology and universities. As Accounting Officer, Mr. Ó Foghlú is primarily responsible for ensuring that the institutes of technology and universities do their job. His job is to ensure they do their job but that has not happened. We will proceed with the meeting but representatives of the three institutions, along with Mr. Ó Foghlú, as Accounting Officer for the Department, will appear before the committee in early course to discuss the financial statements for the periods I mentioned as well as the unaudited financial update covering since the period since year end. We will set a date for that meeting.

We will now move on to the opening statement of Mr. Paul O'Toole of the HEA.