Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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It is unfortunate that we are meeting the HEA today for its yearly visit and the annual report is due out tomorrow. It would have been useful if we could have been given a draft of the report a day or two ago even though it will not be published until tomorrow. The same issue arose with the National Asset Management Agency earlier in the summer. It attended a meeting and its annual financial statement was being published a few days after its annual visit. It would have been helpful to the committee to have read about the HEA’s activities for 2011.

We must ensure that in future when bodies appear before the committee that we have copies of the most recently published annual report. If the report dates to some time ago, then we should be furnished with a draft of more up-to-date information. There might be details in the report tomorrow that we might like to discuss if we were aware of them but we do not have the opportunity. My point is a general one.