Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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When one takes personal debt into account, Ireland is next to Japan in the world figures.

I will now turn to recommendation A.26. The committee recommended that the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, publishes a list of housing completions on at least a quarterly basis. The idea is that the statistical information gathering is not last century but is prior to the last century. The Minister for Finance and for Public Expenditure and Reform is informed that the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, which is part of the NTMA, accepts the recommendation. It has published housing completions for the year end 2018 and a report was published in February.

The committee recommended that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform provides guidance to public bodies to ensure the short-term benefits of leasing of properties are not given undue emphasis when compared with those that outright acquisition may offer. Again, this recommendation is noted and the Department gives the various factors it takes into account in that regard. The committee will keep that matter under consideration.

The committee recommended that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform carries out a review of public bodies whose claims are not managed by the State Claims Agency, with a view to extending the remit of the State Claims Agency to such bodies. The response says that the committee will be aware that it is a matter for the relevant Minister to consider which agencies will come in under that. The Department does not comment "Yes" or "No". It says that it is a matter for each Minister. The committee approached this due to what came to light during our report, which is that all the voluntary hospitals and section 38 organisations - that receive some €4 billion in taxpayers' money - come in under the State Claims Agency. The committee had pointed out that local authorities are similar in their scale of activity and we asked why they do not also come in under the State Claims Agency in order to have one management structure for all the claims. We are aware that Irish Public Bodies Insurance is the body the county councils have set among themselves to monitor those claims. There is, however, very little public transparency in that regard. It is a private company. The freedom of information issue has been before the courts. The committee will come back to this issue because there is a lack of transparency for the public on that. We can revisit this recommendation again when representatives of the State Claims Agency are before the committee.

The Committee recommended that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the National Development Finance Agency should carry out a review of the impact of significant events, such as the collapse of Carillion, on public private partnerships, in order to document what lessons can be learned. The Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform accepts this recommendation. In addition, the response says that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform chairs an interdepartmental steering committee on public private partnership, PPP, projects and that the building of the schools will go ahead. The public private partnership issue is on the agenda of this committee and we have taken the decision that we can never sign off on any Department accounts in which there is a significant PPP contract because if we do not get the information, we cannot have sight of what it is we are discussing and we cannot express an opinion on whether the contract is good, bad or indifferent with regard to value for money. When a contract has been signed and is up and running, such as with the motorways, then commercial confidentiality has to cease after a certain period of time. It cannot continue for the 25 years to the end of the project. That is an issue we will come back to.

I wanted to get it off those items off the agenda for now. It is a big item of correspondence. Is there any other business before we suspend today to allow or witnesses to come in?

On statements and accounts received since the last meeting, we note the clear audited opinion of the Western Development Commission.