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

The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland will appear before the committee on 24 March. The issue is timing. A lot of money has been spent on retrofitting. The grants are there. Major changes have taken place and the programme will be expanded. This is welcome but it is timely to have a look at how it has been performing until now and the value for money of the schemes. It is something that will reach into one in four households in the State in the coming years. For the benefit of members, we saw with the Residential Tenancies Board today that when items are flagged early by members they receive a better breadth of information. I ask them to send issues they have to the clerk.

On 31 March, we will commence a series of engagements on justice-related matters. Engagements have been confirmed with An Garda Síochána on 31 March and the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission on 7 April. Last week, we agreed to engage with the Policing Authority. The secretariat is working on scheduling that meeting for the afternoon of 7 April. We felt that boxing off a week for the Policing Authority might not be the best approach. In view of the fact that GSOC will appear before the committee that morning, we agreed the Policing Authority should appear in the afternoon. The clerk is trying to schedule that meeting at present. There are two non-sitting weeks scheduled for Easter. That has caught a lot of us because one of those weeks is before Easter. This means the following meeting will be on 28 April with the Department of Justice. We will have three justice-related hearings before and after Easter.

We have looked to engage with the University of Limerick, the Department of Finance and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform after Easter. I have discussed UL with the secretariat this week. It has proved to be problematic to confirm a date to bring the chancellor before the committee. We have been trying to give UL as many options as possible. We will try to organise that for one of the hearings immediately after Easter.

Do members wish to raise any other matter regarding the work programme? No. We will conclude our consideration of the work programme for today. As there is no other business, we will adjourn the meeting. Our next meeting is on 3 March when we will have engagement with Home Building Finance Ireland on its 2020 financial statements.