Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We touched on the public services card in our last or second last periodic report, mainly concerning the number of cards being issued and the increase in costs. We did not get into broad policy issues. The Department of Justice and Equality and the DPC will be before us next week. We will send out a note. We have written to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform already. Actually, no. We are suggesting that we write to it to establish a full list of all public bodies that are considering using, or have made the decision to use, the public services card to date and whether the use of the card may be impacted by the DPC's report. We will do that straight away. I believe that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform might be appearing before the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach to discuss this topic today. Actually, that committee will be scheduling a meeting with him about the state of his knowledge of the issue. A couple of committees will be dealing with this matter. We will deal with the DPC and the Department of Justice and Equality next week. We will not have the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection before us until six weeks after that. We understand why. In the meantime, we will write to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and send a briefing note to members. If necessary, we can have another discussion before we start our next meeting. We will move on, as it is approaching 11 a.m.

On 3 October of the following week, we will meet An Bord Pleanála. On 10 October, we will meet the National Transport Authority. We have a gap to fill on 17 October because of the availability of witnesses. We had a few in mind.