Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 28 March 2019

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:00 am

Photo of David CullinaneDavid Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

-----which we were examining ourselves as part of our work. It is a memo that is in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. We have sought a redacted version, which I imagine would block out the names of the individuals, and they are saying that they still cannot give us this memo, yet they can still cite the memo in a lengthy letter taking the Committee of Public Accounts to task. In fact, it is inaccurate in terms of taking us to task on it and also then asking us to remove it, which I would have no problem with if there was inaccurate information that we had published. We should do so in that case. We have done good work on this and I commend the institute on accepting the recommendations of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. My broader point is that the bigger issue is that through our work we have ensured that the Higher Education Authority, HEA, did a more global review of intellectual property and we have come a long way on this. However, I have a concern about a HEA report which was done very comprehensively and cannot be published for legal reasons so then we just park it. I have a real concern about that because it examined issues beyond FeedHenry. The problem is that we will never know what those issues were and these are people on opposing sides with different views of the process and different interpretations of how the process worked. Professor Donnelly was very clear in making that point as well. It was the case that 50 people or more took part in the process, some of whom would have been management, some of whom would have been researchers and staff and there were different opinions but the point is that an independent process heard from all sides and then produced a report that outlined the facts and all we want are the facts and yet it seems now that we will not get them.

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