David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree with that recommendation. I welcome that Mr. Beausang's letter responds to the concerns in our letter. We ended up in a situation where we had the draft report, which was redacted with all the conclusions left out. Essentially, all we got was the context, the terms of reference and so on. We did not get any of the conclusions or recommendations that would have formed part of that report. Mr. Beausang's letter indicates that the Department may follow through with some form of examination of this issue themselves. Mr. Beausang sets out the powers that the Department of Education and Skills and the Minister have. My reading of what Mr. Beausang has said is that the Department has not concluded yet and that it has not settled on what the course of action will be, but that it will make some recommendation to the Minister, which may be to appoint under the Act a special investigator to investigate the claims.

There is a bit of a worry, however, in the reference going back to the whistleblowers and those people who came forward and made protected disclosures, which is fair enough. The Department indicates that the advice is to go through the normal procedures in Waterford Institute of Technology, WIT, to make protected disclosures. I believe that the horse has bolted pretty much on that. I have no difficulty with this being set out as an option, but the people involved have already made protected disclosures to the Higher Education Authority, HEA, and we have to protect the integrity of the process. There would be a concern if people came forward, made protected disclosures to a State body and then were told to go back to the institute. This, however, is set out as an option. The correspondence states also that the individuals can resubmit their disclosures to the Department, which would in turn inform whether or not the Department advises the Minister to appoint a special investigator. It seems that an awful lot of responsibility is being put back onto the whistleblowers and onto those people who made disclosures. I assume these are all busy people and are concerned that they were left hanging. The committee will be aware that some of them have been in contact with me. They may decide that they will not follow through on this. We do not know. It is a little bit unsettling that the correspondence seems to be putting a lot of onus on what the whistleblowers and those who made disclosures should do rather than on the Department following through. I suggest that this committee recommends to the Department that it proceeds with appointing an investigator. We wanted a report. The issue of concern for us was that the HEA did a report that was outside the scope of its powers. That is acknowledged. The Attorney General has acknowledged this. The Department, however, has set out that it has the power under the Act. None of this has ever examined the details of the private company and what it did. It was at all times the activities of the institute and the interactions between the institute and the private company. This is what Mr. McCloone had looked at, what the Comptroller and Auditor General had looked at and what this committee looked at in our hearings on the matter. I would suggest that we strongly recommend that the Department does this. I am aware the Department is awaiting responses from WIT but that is in response to-----