David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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I understand that. I merely make the point. The head of the Higher Education Authority, HEA, has resigned. There were some media reports on the reasons for his resignation. I will not repeat them but they are in the public domain. We were working with the HEA to drive reforms in a number of areas. If it is the case that the reforms met resistance from the Department, I want to know why and what was happening. The chair of the HEA should appear to answer some of those questions on the relationship between the authority and the Department. What we found in our work was the level of governance, who was in charge and who was driving the car in terms of the reforms in governance and policy and the distinction between the two.

A secondary important point, which I have raised on several occasions, is that we still have not received the report into Waterford Institute of Technology. Correspondence to the committee, which we will not get to today, includes a letter from a trade union representing dozens of people who were asked to come forward and be part of a report at risk to themselves. We could call them whistleblowers or individuals who have come forward and made their points known. They believe they have been left hanging because there has been no outcome or report. It seems, on the face of it, the HEA made a complete mess of this issue, did not do its work in advance and did not anticipate the legal challenges that could arise. My point is that we had a number of lengthy hearings with the Accounting Officer in-----