Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 24 November 2016

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:00 am

Photo of Seán FlemingSeán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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I am. We will do that today. We will also check whether there is provision in our Standing Orders to facilitate the receipt of confidential information by the committee. That is a point we will come back to.

The next item of correspondence is in category C, item 181C. It is correspondence from the North Meath Communities Development Association in relation to an ongoing issue with the HSE. Could we defer it in order that we can check for a previous response to the issue, which is an ongoing one? Is that agreed? Agreed.

Next we have correspondence item 182C(i) to (iv) and 191C(i) and (ii). We have two items of correspondence with attachments from a translation company in relation to the transparency of an Office of Public Procurement tendering process. The operations manager of the translation company draws attention to delays in the tendering process.

I propose we write to the Office of Government Procurement for a response, notwithstanding the legal considerations, and deal with it when we receive it. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Correspondence items Nos. 184C(i) to 184C(iii), inclusive, comprise a letter from an auctioneer-estate agent enclosing copies of correspondence with the Residential Tenancies Board on an ongoing issue. These will be noted.

Correspondence items Nos. 188C(i) and 188C(ii) comprise a letter from an individual attaching a newspaper article referring to the man and an assault case. The matter is not within the remit of the committee. I suggest referring it to the justice committee. Is that agreed? Agreed.

The following reports, statements and accounts of bodies audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General were laid since last week. First, the Defence Forces canteen board. Second, the Limerick Institute of Technology, for which there is an audit report but there is a reference to a payment of €550,000 made to seven suppliers without going through the competitive procurement process. The Institute of Technology Tralee has a clear report but it has incurred a deficit in the past three years, which has been highlighted by the Comptroller and Auditor General. As for Waterford Institute of Technology, a qualified report. The institute has consolidated results of its campus companies for the first time in 2013 and 2014. Attention is drawn to the fact that the group had an accumulated deficit of €15.1 million on 31 August 2014. The audit committee did not issue an annual report for 2013-14 to the institute's governing body until June 2015. There was a situation where some companies in the institute were not consolidated into the overall accounts. That has been done now but there was a previous issue.