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

I suggest that we hold this matter over until next week. Is that agreed? Agreed. The funding for Benefacts is a small enough amount of money relative to funding for many other areas. The service was widely used and to lose it like this is a loss to the State. We will put it in the work programme for next week.

The next item of correspondence is No. R1498B from Mr. David Moloney, Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, dated 7 October 2022. It concerns the minute of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform in regard to our report on our examination of Vote 29, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, programme B, broadcasting, for 2019, and Vote 33, the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media for 2020. The minute of the Minister is the official response to the recommendations of the committee. We raised this matter with the Secretary General this morning and it is clear the minute is not in line with the Department's own circular, which I quoted to him. That circular, which was signed off by Mr. Moloney, provides that the minute should respond to every recommendation, stating whether that recommendation has been accepted or not and the reasons for same. That has not been done in regard to any of the recommendations in our report.

It is open to us to take this matter up with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. We could also write to the Accounting Officer for the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media and request an explanation for the poor quality of the response. In addition to failing to comply with the circular, a number of the committee's requests are not directly addressed. That is the situation and, as I said, I raised it with Mr. Moloney earlier. Do any members wish to comment?