Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 24 September 2015
Public Accounts Committee
Technological University for the South East: Report
10:00 am
Mr. Michael Kelly:
I cannot offer any more on the issue than what I have in the report. In the case of my own exercise, the terms of reference are much more about looking forward than looking back. I did look back in trying to see if there were learning points from what had happened previously that we could harvest and put on the table in order that we would not repeat the same mistakes again. I have done that in the report. What they all pointed me towards was not to try to assume that we just move on with this in some conventional sense. Actually, we needed, for the very reason the Chairman mentioned, to allow a period, which I argued in answer to Deputy John Deasy's earlier point about about moving on with this, in order that it would not be rushed. We should be sure when coming out of that period that we have the foundations of trust and mutual respect that will be required to build a solid institution concerned with preparing young minds for the future. We need to be very careful about getting that environment right. We should spend the time and the trouble getting this stuff up on the table and out of the way and then move on. If we do that, I am confident that we will have a much more open attitude towards the sharing of data, information and so on to the point where-----