Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Devlin. Could we agree and note the accounts and statements in the usual way? Agreed. They will be published as part of the minutes.

No. 3 is correspondence. Items that were not flagged for discussion for this meeting will continue to be dealt with in accordance with the proposed actions, and decisions taken by the committee in relation to correspondence are recorded in the minutes of the committee's meetings and published on the committee's web page.

The first category of correspondence under which Members have flagged items for discussion is category B - correspondence from Accounting Officers or Ministers and follow-up to Committee of Public Accounts meetings. We will deal with matters held over for consideration in public from the meetings on 31 March, 21 April, and 28 April, as well as some recent items.

Correspondence No. 459 B is from Ms Orla Flynn, president, Galway Mayo Institute of Technology, GMIT, dated 22 March 2021 providing information requested by the committee following a proposal from Deputy Dillon concerning ring-fenced funding for GMIT's Mayo campus. A working group was established in early 2017 to develop a plan to ensure a sustainable future for the Mayo campus arising from concerns about its financial viability. At our meeting on 31 March we agreed to note and publish this item and we held it over for consideration in public. We also agreed to request further information from GMIT, the Higher Education Authority, HEA, and the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. The responses that relate to the matter are Nos. 547, 536, and 548, respectively, and they are also before us today.

In correspondence No. 536, the HEA states that a review of the implementation of the plan set out in the working group's report, Developing a Sustainable Plan for the Mayo Campus of Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, which was published in late 2017, is currently under way. The proposal before the committee is to request a copy of that review, once it has been completed. Is that agreed? Agreed. This matter has been flagged for discussion by Deputies Dillon, Carthy and Munster.