David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to make a wider point. I realise we are dealing with the letter from the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. I will deal with that in a moment. I raised this matter at the last meeting and I need your guidance, Chairman, on how we will proceed with it now. When we first dealt with this we discussed the matter with the Secretary General of the Department, his officials and members of the board. At the time, we did not have any of the minutes of the board meetings or the sub-committee meetings. We got those after the fact. We did not have the reports from the independent examination carried out. As it happens, they shed some light on some of the issues. Again, we had a false meeting whereby we had the Accounting Officer and the board before the committee but we did not have the information we now have. That would have enabled us to put the questions that we can now put. I suggest we get them back in again, because we are now armed with the information.

It may serve as an example to other Accounting Officers in the sense that when this happens we are not going to accept being kept in the dark about reports or accept having to drag information out of people. They come in and we do not get a chance to put questions that we should be able to put because we do not have the information. We need to think about this. Many of these issues centre around boards making decisions on information they do not have. The Committee of Public Accounts ends up in exactly the same position. Even after the fact, we do not get information to allow us to do our work. That is a strong point that we should make in response to the correspondence.

Mr. Watt will come before the committee. I realise there are sectoral committees. I have no inclination, nor do other members of the committee, to step on the toes of any sectoral committee. However, if we are to be honest, there is an element of jockeying for position from some of the committees. Those sectoral committees have a job to do and good luck to them. They can bring in Ministers. We do not seek to bring in any Ministers.