Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will discuss it the next day, and it is up to us to decide whether we have further questions to ask. We have noted and published it, but we need to discuss it. We will make a point of discussing it and make sure, when the documentation is going out, that members are aware that it will be up for discussion the next day.

The next item is No. 2078B from Ms Maria Browne, Chief State Solicitor, dated 29 March, providing a breakdown of outstanding lottery grant cases for the year ending 2018, as requested by the committee. Ms Browne states that the correct terminology is "outstanding files" as opposed to outstanding cases. We are being corrected on our terminology. There were 174 files outstanding at the end of 2018. We will note and publish that. When the Office of the Chief State Solicitor appeared before the committee we asked a question about the number of files it had on voluntary organisations which had made applications for national lottery funds, and were all experiencing some delay. Ms Browne has outlined the details on that. There are quite a few still outstanding. Some of the cases have been dealt with from the Chief State Solicitor's point of view, but third-party solicitors have not yet provided confirmation. The documentation is there.

The next item is No. 2080B from Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll, Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality, providing information requested by the committee concerning Courts Service statistics. It appears that neither the Department nor the Courts Service are able to provide the number of non-legally aided persons appearing before the courts. We will note and publish this. We had been given details on legal aid cases and we had asked if, as the total number of cases is known, whether we could work out how many non-legally aided cases there were. The Department has said that it cannot do that. The letter says:

Legal Aid certs granted can refer to a single offence or a category of offences. A defendant appearing before the courts could be granted a number of Legal Aid Certs for offences in the one case or could have a number of Legal Aid Certs referring to different cases before the courts.

That is not corrected. The letter goes on to say:

As indicated previously, legal aid is granted by the courts in the majority of indictable offences dealt with in the Circuit, Central and Special Criminal Courts. The Courts Service advises that this would refer to at least 95% of these cases.

In the District Court it advises that approximately 70% of defendants get free legal aid and says that the main reason for that is that cases dealt with there include minor road traffic offences such as speeding, tax certificates or national car test, NCT, certificates not being displayed. That is as much information as the Department has. We will note and publish that.

The next category is category C, which is correspondence from private individuals and other correspondence. There are three items, being Nos. 1872C, 1876C and 1886C, which we will discuss in private session. They relate to the University of Limerick. We will have a short private session before we sit in public session with our witnesses.

The next item of correspondence is No. 2072C from an individual, dated 25 March. The individual raises a number of matters around the governance of KWETB and its failure to respond to questions raised. The correspondence also raises questions about evidence given by witnesses from KWETB to this committee. Do members want to discuss this? We could get the permission of the person who wrote to us to forward the correspondence to the Department where the matters relating to the KWETB are being examined and seek to have a response put before the committee. I propose writing to the chair of KWETB for a collated response to the specific matters in the evidence referred to by the correspondent. Do members want to do that or will we hold it over for consideration with other KWETB correspondence?