Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 29 March 2018

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:00 am

Photo of Seán FlemingSeán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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Let the chairman and the chief executive of a body state that here on national television. They will make every effort to make sure they will comply in future. We are not here to issue sanction, but we can achieve results without issuing sanctions. We will come back to that in a month's time.

That list is up there. Those are not the people who submitted their accounts. That is the list of people who have acknowledged the letter we sent to them. I am just bringing people up-to-date on that.

We had a discussion on the work programme on the last day. Some members want other items included on the work programme. In an effort to make things a bit simpler, I propose we condense some of meetings where we had two days set aside into one day. For example, we have the Department of Finance listed on 19 April to deal with its accounts. We have the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform listed on 10 May to deal with its accounts. We have the NTMA, National Treasury Management Agency, listed on 21 June to deal with its accounts and financial statements. On 28 June, we have listed the Tax Appeals Office and the Revenue Commissioners. On 12 July, we have listed the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on financial reporting and fiscal transparency. These are five meetings. I propose we condense them into two.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform officials were to meet the committee twice, so we will have to deal with that in a morning and afternoon. That frees up one meeting. With regard to the Department of Finance, the Tax Appeals Commission and the NTMA, it might be possible to have three slots on a given day. I propose that we do our best to try to have one meeting for that block, although it might require a second meeting. Certainly, we will save at least two days in that regard which we can use for other purposes. That is a suggestion and we can try to work on it. Is that agreed? We do not want to spend five full Thursdays purely discussing the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Finance. We need to do our work but we need to concentrate it in a shorter timeframe.