David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise an issue before we meet the representatives from the institutes. The HEA's opening statement refers to its draft report into Waterford Institute of Technology.

This is the investigation conducted by Mr. McLoone. We raised this several times with the HEA because the report itself was referred to the Attorney General and legal advice was sought from the legal team of the HEA. During the latest meeting we had with the HEA, its outgoing CEO was confident that some report would be published but the correspondence received since seems to suggest that there will be no report. The board will have to formally decide this but the correspondence suggests that there will not be any report and that the HEA will write to the 50 whistleblowers, thanking them for their input. That is not acceptable at all. We must call in the Secretary General or, if he has a conflict of interest, the next best person from the Department and the HEA to explain the options now.

The key issue is that the HEA is claiming that it did not have the authority to prepare the report it prepared but it is more a question of the information that surfaced in the course of the investigation rather than the HEA being able to conduct an examination. In any event, there seems to be precedent here. In Waterford and in other areas, the Minister appointed inspectors to examine issues and that mechanism does allow for an examination of the types of issues that were examined in the course of the McLoone report. We simply cannot accept that we overstepped our powers. What has not changed are the facts and I imagine that whatever conclusions or recommendations are contained in the report are not in dispute. The only contentious issue is the extent of the HEA's powers. We need to look at the issue of the powers of the HEA if it does not have the power to conduct this type of examination. It expects the Committee of Public Accounts to do some of the work, which we are doing, although we are not equipped for it. It is hiring all sorts of outside organisations at significant cost to the taxpayer. Some reports are being discredited by whistleblowers saying that they do not agree with the findings. Individuals can have their own opinions on them. A number of issues are at play here but the primary one is that we do not simply accept the HEA's assertion, if such an assertion is made, that it cannot do anything and allow this to be dropped. That cannot happen. We said that we would come back to this issue, even though it is a matter of policy. We can still make recommendations to the Minister if we so wish. The powers of the HEA are being considered currently and at some point this committee needs to reflect on that issue as well because it has an impact on our work. My primary concern is the first part so I ask the Chairman to provide guidance on how we go about-----