Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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I advise members of the constitutional requirement that members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name are in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of a person or an entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue your remarks. It is imperative that they comply with such direction.

The first item on the agenda is the minutes. Can I take it that the minutes of the last meeting, which have been circulated, are agreed? Agreed.

There are six items of correspondence. The first is No. 005, which is an email from IBEC on an infrastructure paper that it produced. This includes the IBEC paper on infrastructure, also stating that it would welcome the opportunity to discuss its policy priorities with the committee. Do members agree to note and publish the correspondence, and to invite IBEC to our meeting next week? We were planning for somebody else and there is a gap. IBEC has agreed to come at a week's notice. It would be good to hear from IBEC, which is outside the public sector. We will agree to invite IBEC to the meeting next week. This will be the main guest at the meeting next week.

No. 006 is from Coalition 2030 seeking a meeting with the committee to discuss Ireland's performance under the sustainable development goals. It is agreed to note and publish the correspondence and to consider an invitation its representatives as part of our work programme. We will not set a date today but we will include the group under the work programme of the committee.

No. 007 relates to the national children's science museum. I propose that we do not deal with that today because there are serious issues on which we would want to read up thoroughly. We will come back to it to next week before we publish it.

No. 008 is a submission by Uisce Éireann. An item from a private citizen relates to our previous engagement with Uisce Éireann and sets out issues relating to strategic priorities, funding issues, ageing assets, insurance claims, the cost of approval for projects and the process for approval of projects. Do we agree to note and publish this correspondence with the details of the private citizen blanked out, because it is a private citizen? Agreed.

No. 009 is from the Parliamentary Budget Office, which sets out some recent reports that may be of assistance to the committee. I suggest we note and publish these. Is that agreed? Agreed.

No. 010 is from the County and City Management Association, CCMA, which sets the CCMA's role, lists its various established committees, and offers to meet with the committee. We will agree to note and publish this and certainly to invite its representatives to a future meeting when we come to the work programme.

I will move on to the work programme and future meetings to take us through the next month or so. It has been circulated. We mentioned IBEC for next week, with the Commission for Regulation of Utilities on 25 June, An Bord Pleanála and the Office of the Planning Regulator on 2 July, the Courts Service of Ireland on 9 July and the Environmental Protection Agency on 16 July. Members can see that what I am proposing is that we get in some of the regulators that are heavily involved in dealing with processes, I will just deal with that, and the issues of the time it takes for each of these to do.

It goes without saying, when we are talking about An Bord Pleanála, that we are not talking about individual planning cases and the same applies to the Courts Service. It is all about the issue of judicial reviews in the Courts Service and it would be good to hear from those State bodies as to their involvement in various capital projects. Then we will meet other entities that the State bodies are involved in directing.

Following the summer recess we should concentrate on housing for a few weeks, including infrastructure and everything that goes with it, with a view to issuing a report from this committee in the next term. If we can get agreement, we should issue a report before the recess on the first five or six meetings that we have had. We will not be able to come to concrete conclusions at that stage but we can list the key items and concerns that have come up. We will have spoken to many people but we will have to speak to others before we can come to conclusions. It would be good for the committee, before we split up in the middle of July, to issue a report on our work to date. The secretariat will work on that and it will come back to us in draft form for clearance and so on. My proposal is that we would issue that in the middle of July to show the work the committee is doing. Can we get agreement on those general items? Agreed. That is great. We will suspend briefly while the witnesses take their seats.