Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 30 September 2020

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee (Resumed)

10:00 am

Photo of Marc MacSharryMarc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail)
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I agree with that. Given the new format with the two hour meetings, in situations where we might be bringing in the OPW, the Irish Prison Service, An Garda and others, it is going to take a number of meetings. Two hours is not going to cover it and I would rather we did not have only a cursory glance over what will be very important issues, because of limitations on time. That will also work very well with our legal advice about the accuracy of the invitation, what is going to be discussed and so on. We need to split them up and the organisations will have to be told we are going to need them perhaps four times. When we get up and running properly, perhaps we will be in a position to sit more often if there are rooms available. On Hammond Lane, apart from the need to get the family courts up and running, which is more a matter for the justice committee, a peculiar thing happened when we had them here before. The project did not go ahead and it would have fallen due for a vacant site tax but instead of paying that they leased it as a builder's yard. I asked if there was a change of use in planning permission for that and we did not get any answers. There is no doubt that there are people hoarding land nationally but in some instances we will probably have developers who are very hard-pressed to try to get a project off the ground and having to pay their vacant site tax while agencies of the State are doing the three-card trick to duck out of their financial obligations. That is an aspect of it as well.