Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 13 December 2018

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:00 am

Photo of Seán FlemingSeán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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We will write to Revenue and ask what body takes the prosecution; is it handed over to the Garda or does Revenue itself prosecute; and what were the legal costs of each of the cases in 2016, 2017 and 2018 to date.

The next item is from Mr. Ray Mitchell at the HSE. We are keeping that man busy this week. The item is a note on the record retention policy in place, in particular procurement documents, and changes that will be made to this. There is also a note providing a list of supports available to those affected by the H1N1 vaccine, that is, the flu vaccine. This arose from matters concerning the procurement of goods and services and retention of records. We found that some of the documentation concerning CervicalCheck was not kept on file. That is where that query arose.

The next item of correspondence is No. 1,787 from Mr. Nick Ashmore, chief executive officer of the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, dated 5 December 2018. It provides a response requested by the committee regarding the value for money query. I propose we forward a copy of the correspondence to the individual who raised the matter. I find this response completely unsatisfactory. From recollection I think we asked some questions. A major fund is available to the SBCI. It does not lend directly. It provides funding to on-lenders, meaning banks or other institutions. I want to know the breakdown of how much is provided through banks and how much is provided through non-bank on-lenders. I find it extraordinary that on writing to the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland we got back a three-page letter on money matters without a euro symbol in it. There is a lot of lovely talk about policies and principles. It could have been taken from the opening statement describing what the SBCI does in its annual report. It gives us none of the information we are really looking for; how much the SBCI has loaned, how much the banks have loaned on, how much the non-banks have loaned on-----