David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My point is none of that was offered up to us when the Accounting Officer was here. Mr. Finnegan states that there was no attempt on his part or the part of anyone else in the Houses of the Oireachtas to withhold any information. None of us is accusing him of withholding information, but he was here and he was made aware of and knew about the difficulties in locating the printer in the room for which it was intended; as he states himself, there were difficulties in "the critical early stages of the project.".

This is a printer that cost significantly more than it should have because, it seems, mistakes were made. We know from the freedom of information, FOI, request that a memo was sent to the Clerk at the Dáil in December 2018 outlining all of these difficulties and challenges. I am also aware that the Comptroller and Auditor General would have been aware as well of some of the issues, problems or challenges with the fit-out. The Comptroller and Auditor General knew about the challenges. Mr. Finnegan knew. We had a discussion about the accounts. I specifically asked about that broad heading and the printer was mentioned, but we were not made aware of it.

When Mr. Finnegan states that there was no lack of candour or no withholding of information, there certainly was not a volunteering of information. While it is the case that we may have come to know about it when we looked at the accounts for next year or the year after the fit-out costs were mentioned, we expect Accounting Officers to give us all the information. It is not credible for Mr. Finnegan to say that that was the case when he appeared before us. He is a civil servant of long standing and someone I have a high regard for, but when Accounting Officers are here, they need to account fully for all of the issues. When specific questions were asked on this overspend, and the questions we were asking were quite clear in relation to the overspend, at the very least we should been made aware of the challenges that were in play here as to the additional costs, and we were not. Now we are, and have a seven-page report. We still do not have the full costs. There may be more costs. I have spoken to some of the staff as well so there are no HR issues with the staff. Let us very clear about that. There are no HR issues with the operation of this printer. There are training issues. It is a printer that is twice the size of any printer the staff have ever used before. They need to use a forklift in a very tight space to load up the paper. It has to be done in the turn machine, that turns the paper. It has to be brought in in a forklift, loaded up, printed on one side, and then the forklift brought back out again to a different room and brought back in again. There was no consultation with the staff - none whatsoever. Training has not taken place yet.

This was a mess from start to finish that has cost us more money. Yet despite all of that, we were not informed when the Accounting Officer was here. For me that is not good enough. Mr. Finnegan has to appear before us again to account properly for all of this. Yes, we have his report, but it is our job to hold him to account fairly and give him the opportunity to respond. He has given his opinion. I am giving my opinion. Other members of the committee will have their opinion. My opinion is very clear: this was a mess, Mr. Finnegan was not as forthcoming as he should have been, and as a member of the Committee of Public Accounts, I am not happy with that.