Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 14 December 2016

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

10:00 am

Photo of Seán FlemingSeán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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For now, we will write to the Minister who is responsible and the new chairman of the board and we will ask both of them for a response and we will see what happens with the audit in due course. We have the option of going further depending on how things evolve.

The National Haemophilia Council got a clear audit report. The next item is Transport Infrastructure Ireland, which also got a clear audit report. Next is the Crawford Art Gallery Cork Limited. It got a clear audit report but there is a comment that it did not carry out the review of the effectiveness of the system of internal control during the course of the year. The Kilkenny-Carlow Education and Training Board got a clear report. The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board is next. Its remit is to build and equip the national paediatric hospital. It got a clear audit report. It might be a matter for the health committee but if anyone wants to have a look at that set of accounts they are in the Oireachtas Library and they will be published subsequent to the meeting. It is a big investment by the Irish taxpayer. People can raise the issue at a later date if they wish.

The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner got a clear report. Coláiste Mhuire gan Smál, Ollscoil Luimnigh, got a clear audit report. Again, the issue of deferred pensions arises, which is common to many public sector bodies. The Irish Film Board got a clear audit report. The Ombudsman for the Defence Forces got a clear audit report and Horse Racing Ireland got a clear audit report for its 2015 accounts. The agriculture committee has had the group in before it recently.

I have nothing formally drafted for the work programme. I suggest that on 12 January we have a detailed meeting to consider progress on the Project Eagle report. I hope we will be able to finalise that within the week. I would like to be able to publish it on approximately Thursday, 19 January. We will have a meeting on 12 January and perhaps another meeting on the following Tuesday or Wednesday to tidy up the report before we issue it on 19 January. The normal process for issuing a report is for the committee to do so in the AV room. It might be for an hour in the afternoon.

It is important that the committee holds some normal public meetings dealing with issues other than Project Eagle. With that in mind, for our meetings on Thursday, 19 January 2017, Thursday, 26 January 2017 and Thursday, 2 February 2017, I have come up with three specific items which we could try to deal with. The first is the issue in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report on the guardian ad litemservice. The second is the sale or disposal of the Government jet, which is a discrete chapter in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. The third item is the special report on the cost of the changes to the Prison Service. We will try to get some normal business meetings going and in early January we will lay out our work programme for the following months. We will be bringing in the HSE, third level institutions and so forth. The issues I have suggested for our initial meetings next year are short and very specific and that would be preferable to opening up, for example, broader issues with regard to the HSE.