Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 18 April 2024

Public Accounts Committee

2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth

9:30 am

Mr. Kevin McCarthy:

Fire certification is a matter for the local authorities. For any provider we are contracting with and where we are accommodating people, the fire inspection services on the ground are very active in ensuring that they are satisfied as regards fire safety compliance. We fully support this. We liaise quite closely with the local authorities in this regard to ensure that there is good understanding among providers of what the requirements are and to ensure that the appropriate fire certification is in place. As I said, this is a red-line issue for us. We will not contract, or we will terminate existing contracts, in cases where we are not satisfied in respect of fire certification.

In compliance more generally, on the Ukraine side we have had a very active compliance team in place since the middle of last year. This team is following up on contracts in cases where we are not satisfied with contract performance. We have exited a good number of contracts - 33 in total - arising from concerns we identified as part of the work of the compliance team.