Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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The business before us this afternoon is the minutes of our previous meeting, accounts and financial statements, correspondence, work programme and any other business.

The first item is the minutes of our meeting of 12 May, which have been circulated to members. Do members wish to raise any matters in terms of the minutes? No. Are the minutes agreed? Agreed. As usual, the minutes will be published on the committee's web page.

The next item is accounts and financial statements. One set of accounts was presented to the Oireachtas Library between 9 and 13 May. I will ask the Comptroller and Attorney General to address it before opening the floor to members.

Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

This is the first of the 2021 financial statements that are beginning to come through. It is the Account of the Receipt of Revenue of the State collected by the Revenue Commissioners. It had a turnover of €97 billion in total. I am glad to say that it is a clear audit opinion.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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The Comptroller and Auditor General has handled that big pile of money very well.

Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

That is quite a lot of money, yes.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It is to good to hear that. Can we agree to note the accounts and statements? Agreed. As usual, the listing of accounts and financial statements will be published as part of our minutes.

The next business is correspondence. As previously agreed, items that were not flagged for discussion for this meeting will continue to be dealt with in accordance with the proposed actions that have been circulated. Decisions taken by the committee on correspondence are recorded in the minutes of our meetings and published on its web page. The first category of correspondence under which members have flagged items for discussion is correspondence from Accounting Officers and-or Ministers and follow-up to committee meetings.

No. R1232 B from Mr. Ray Mitchell, assistant national director, HSE, dated 9 May 2022, providing information requested by the committee during our meeting with the HSE on 10 March. The meeting focused on the HSE's expenditure on mental health services and the child and adolescent mental health services. It is proposed to note and publish this item of correspondence. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Deputy Munster flagged it for discussion, but she had to leave. Does any other member wish to comment on that correspondence? Everybody is okay with it.

The next correspondence is No. R1233 Bfrom Mr. Kevin McCarthy, Secretary General, Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, dated 9 May 2022. It provides information requested by the committee regarding a timeline for the implementation of the White Paper to end direct provision and the establishment of a new international protection support service. The Secretary General addresses the impact of the war in Ukraine on that work, stating that almost 28,000 Ukrainian refugees have come to Ireland under the temporary protection directive, with over 19,000 accommodated by the State. As the Department is responsible for providing short-term accommodation to Ukrainian refugees, it has had to redeploy staff, which has impacted on some areas of the White Paper implementation process. It is proposed to note and publish this correspondence and to forward it to the relevant sectoral committee for its information. Is that agreed? Agreed. Again, Deputy Munster had flagged it for discussion.

The next correspondence is No. R1235 B from Ms Katherine Licken, Secretary General, Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, dated 11 May 2022. It provides information requested by the committee regarding the digitising of records of the Irish Land Commission. It is proposed to note and publish this item of correspondence and to request information on the timelines for digitisation of search aids from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, as well as whether there are plans to digitise all records. Is that agreed? Agreed. Deputy Catherine Murphy wishes to speak on this.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I was probably the member who requested this. Those records are held in Portlaoise, Chairman, so you are probably familiar with the location in which they are held. There are 8 million records. They are a treasure trove. They are one part of the Land Commission records. The other part are the ones that relate to Northern Ireland and they are available to view in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast. They are not digitised but they are available. The matters they relate to are tenants of the land, issues around the revolutionary era, rentals, etc. They give a great deal of information and date back as far as the late 1800s.

What we are being told here is that the catalogue is being digitised rather than the records. The Department is telling us that these are very delicate records. It is dealing with the National Archives, which does brilliant work in conserving documents. However, there are two matters of concern. One is the longevity of these records in the first instance and the second is accessibility to those records, which have an important historical and genealogical benefit that we are not exploiting. We have a desperate attitude to our historical records. A load of them were burned - not by us but on our behalf - in the Public Records Office in 1922.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, in the Custom House.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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No, it was the Public Records Office in the Four Courts.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Yes.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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The other issue is that it is only recently that the expansion has been allowed in the National Archives in Bishop Street. I visited the National Library some years ago with members of one of the committees and I was horrified at the risk at which we are putting our national collection. Money has been allocated for that since.

This is bad news in this letter in that what has been agreed to is very limited. We should write back and try to find out why it was decided and what was the methodology for deciding. There was a big announcement not long ago about this. Why was it decided to only digitise the finding aids, as it were, rather than the records themselves? If they are that fragile, one would have thought that conservation and digitisation would be the optimum. I also do not understand why we do not see the benefit of these. Historians and genealogists have been looking for these for years.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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There is also a day-to-day practical use as well.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I know.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I have had to look for information in them with regard to bog plots, turf banks, plots of turf and also plots of land that were previously in the Land Commission or attached to a local estate. Turbary rights are registered in them. There are also tenant holdings, as you mentioned. There is information regarding leasehold, freehold and the like. I am open to correction on this but we should write to the Secretary General of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine about it. I went to Cavan looking for records at one stage and I ended up with the Portlaoise situation. It is the first time I saw where all those records are pinned down. At least we know now that they are in place.

It would be useful as well to ask the Secretary General of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Mr. Brendan Gleeson, for information regarding where they are stored. I believe I know the building in which they are stored and I have some concerns about retaining the quality of the documents. They are probably fragile, as you said. In addition, there is the security of the documents and their accessibility. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine seems to be the responsible body, so we need to ask Mr. Gleeson in the Department to give us an outline on that.

Your point on that is that is only the index or the catalogue that is going to be nominated or-----

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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We will be told what is there-----

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It is the record itself.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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-----but we will not be able to see them, even historical ones.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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The records are considerable. It is how accessible they are, the security of where they are, the building they are in and the maintenance of the documents, particularly if they are fragile. For example, if mice got into a building where there were paper records, enormous damage could be done over a period of time without anyone realising it.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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One need only look at the census records. People no longer need to go into the National Archives because they can find them online. I am certainly not looking for somebody's information from two months ago - they are closed now anyway - or from the 1990s, Certainly, with things that are historical and over 100 years old, we do not seem to understand their value and the wider value.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Is it agreed that we ask the secretariat to correspond with the Secretary General of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine about that? Agreed. I thank the Deputy for that.

I will proceed to the work programme.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Chairman, there was one other item of correspondence that I flagged. It was No. 1230 from the Policing Authority.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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It is not on my list, Deputy.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I thought I had flagged it.

Could I speak briefly to it?

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, go ahead.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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The aspect I want to deal with relates to the homicide review. It was around homicide classification and the investigation by the Garda in 2017. Essentially, this letter is giving us some reassurance that a report was published in December 2019. The letter states, "the classification did not impact the quality of the subsequent investigations undertaken [but they wanted] ... to prevent a reoccurrence ..." To be honest, what concerns me about that and the reason I wanted to raise it is there has been a recent newspaper article that makes me doubt that information. A guy, a civilian, was appointed by the Policing Authority. I am reading from a newspaper article. Mr. John Mooney wrote it but I cannot see the date. I can provide it to the clerk to the committee. The article states, "a civilian appointed by the Policing Authority to lead the GSAS after an international competition, resigned unexpectedly in 2019 shortly after accepting the role." There had been a whistleblower. She was the deputy head of the Garda Síochána Analysis Service. She was concerned with the classification. This is fairly recent.

I do not want to accept this at face value where there are reports that indicate that there are people who are pretty much saying otherwise. There was a couple of them who refused to sign off on the report on the grounds that it contained unreliable data and who say they were subsequently excluded from compiling a report on the issue for the Policing Authority.

I will give the Chairman the newspaper report.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I suggest, as it was not flagged, that we come back to this item, R1230, and the newspaper article in order to give members notice next week. In fairness, the Deputy is looking at it there but the members have not seen it yet. We will come back to it next week, if that is okay, and give it a proper look.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Okay.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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That completes correspondence.

Moving to our work programme, the committee will be happy to hear the following engagements have been confirmed: the Department of Health and the HSE next week on 26 May; the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth on 2 June; and the National Pediatric Hospital Development Board on 16 June.

As previously agreed, the secretariat has made inquiries about scheduling a meeting on 23 June to examine local government oversight and accountability. The following bodies have been requested to attend the meeting: Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage; the Local Government Audit Service; and the National Oversight and Audit Commission, NOAC.

Also, at our meeting last week, members were requested to review the work programme in advance of today's meeting with a view to prioritising engagements for the three meeting slots that remain open before the summer recess. If members have not had a chance to do so I will ask the clerk to the committee to contact members in advance of next week's meeting and we will decide on the engagements at that point.

There are a couple of bits there. An Bord Pleanála came up and we discussed that we would like to have it in again. Is that agreed? Agreed. We could pencil it in for one of the slots, perhaps on 30 June.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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And the hospital board.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Horse Racing Ireland was one that some members mentioned that we would have in. For that engagement, could we mention, in particular, one item in relation to funding for Horse Sport Ireland, which comes from Horse Racing Ireland? It may come straight from the Department. I do not know what the relationship is between those two bodies. I am not clear on that. Maybe we will have a look at that. In any case, we need to bring in Horse Racing Ireland. That is two of them.

That would leave one outstanding before the summer recess. Members might come back before next week with their suggestions regarding that.

Next week we will engage with the Department of Health and the HSE. Unless there is any other business, the meeting stands adjourned until next Thursday, 26 May, when we will engage with the Department of Health and the HSE, at 9.30 a.m. Gabhaim buíochas libh go léir.