Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Is this a notified audit? I presume it is. Will it include a health and safety audit? Notifying the outcome to us would be useful. We spoke to the State Claims Agency about Casement Aerodrome, where there are ongoing issues. Some of those have been resolved, but I am particularly interested in No. 5 in the document, according to which the State Claims Agency’s enterprise risk management unit has scheduled an audit of Baldonnel to take place in September. It is obviously a notified audit, but what about the health and safety aspect? This may be a case of shutting the door after the horse has bolted. There were significant issues, there are people with very adverse health problems and a large number of people have died prematurely even though the aerodrome is not a gigantic employer. I have a running list of people who have died and what their ages were. These were pre-retirement deaths. Some of them were quite young. We must be sure that this issue is dealt with completely. Will the audit have an historical element? According to the correspondence, Casement Aerodrome’s historical claims relate to a period no later than 2012. I presume that some of the issues have been dealt with now. I believe the State Claims Agency told us that it was dealing with 11 live claims from this situation, but the number could be significantly higher. It is a difficult case for people to prove.