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

Deputy Murphy is correct. The Committee of Public Accounts is not a disinterested party. We should be very interested in this. Good work has been done by the previous Committee of Public Accounts on this. Before any decision is made about anything I would like the opportunity to read the correspondence. I certainly want to read the detail in it. On flicking through, there appear to be a lot of detailed questions in it. It is up to the Committee of Public Accounts to formulate the questions and send them to GSOC as we see fit. We should be doing that. As I said, the first thing we must do is read that correspondence and have the opportunity to do that.

I invite Deputy Carthy. Deputy Carthy may have left this meeting to go to the agriculture committee. I must also mention we have had late apologies from Deputy Colm Burke, which we will note in the minutes.

I suggest to Deputy Murphy that, with the agreement of the committee, members will take the correspondence away and read it. It is a very important issue. I am concerned about it. Deputy Murphy and other committee members are also concerned about it. There are serious matters involved. I am also mindful that a criminal investigation is being carried out. Matters have also been raised in the correspondence that are relevant to a court hearing on 5 October this year. We are to be mindful of that also. These are two reasons in doing our work we do not want to impair or impact negatively on the work of GSOC or the work of the courts on a different matter on 5 October. I respectfully suggest the committee scrutinises the correspondence over the next day or two and then comes back to it. Is that agreed? Agreed.

No. 663B, from Mr. Niall Cody, chairman, Office of the Revenue Commissioners, dated 17 June 2021, provides information requested by the committee on the disclosure of details of settlements made with Revenue. This is correspondence we referred to earlier. We had more or less dealt with this. We had asked Revenue if, from its point of view, there was any impediment to RTÉ providing the committee with details of its settlement with Revenue. Mr. Cody says “it is wholly a matter for the person or body who entered into a tax settlement with Revenue to decide whether it is appropriate to disclose the details of any settlement subject to any legislative constraints”. The proposed action is to note and publish. We have dealt with that, and if Deputies Murphy and Munster are happy with that, we will move on from it. The point made in the letter is that Mr. Cody clearly outlines there is no issue from Revenue's point of view with RTÉ disclosing to the Committee of Public Accounts how much was involved in that settlement. Is the committee happy enough with that? Yes.

No. 681B, from Mr. Graham Doyle, Secretary General, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, dated 23 June 2021, provides information requested by the committee regarding cost rental schemes. This arises from our engagement with the Department on 3 June. I understand the committee secretariat has also received the rest of the information that was requested at that meeting and it will be circulated in due course. This information has just come in. The proposed action is to note and publish. Deputy Carroll MacNeill had particular questions around that. Deputy Murphy has also flagged this issue for discussion. If Deputy Carroll MacNeill is present at the meeting, she may also want to come in on this.