Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

The letter from Pobal to the Department of Social Protection did not result in a referral to me. We have no record of receiving any correspondence from the Department. I only became aware of concerns around Wicklow Enterprise Park when there was a press inquiry asking if an investigation had started in my office on foot of the recommendation from Pobal.

In a way this case raises some of the concerns we had looking at the SIPTU fund and the proliferation of funding from many sources to grant funded bodies. If we follow the amount of grant funding down through any particular line, it does not look like a significant amount. Wicklow Enterprise Park Limited is established as a company and will only come within my remit if over 50% of its income in a year is sourced from public sources. That is the first thing I would have to establish. It is something I will examine to see if I have a role to play.

On the general point about the oversight of grant funded bodies, we made recommendations in the SIPTU report and the committee will have the opportunity to discuss those with the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The SIPTU report is listed for hearing and the recommendations about the regime that is in place for oversight of grants will be outlined. We have also agreed with the Department to engage with it on a process of reviewing the arrangements in place around oversight of grants. One of the things that must be addressed in that context is understanding how much public funding goes into a grant funded body. There must be a system in place to draw that information together if we are to get proper oversight of these bodies.