John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Members are all very welcome to today's meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts. We have received apologies from Deputy Aidan Farrelly. Before we proceed I have a few housekeeping matters to go through.

Members are reminded of the provisions of Standing Order 226, whereby the committee shall refrain from inquiring into the merits of a policy or policies of the Government or a Minister of the Government, or the merits of the objectives of such policies. Members are also reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I remind members of the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. Members of the committee attending remotely must do so from within the precincts of Leinster House.

The agenda for today is to discuss the minutes, accounts and statements, correspondence and forthcoming meetings. We will suspend the meeting thereafter for the engagement with officials from the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment. The minutes of the meeting of 14 May 2026 were agreed by the committee in private session and these will be published on the committee's website in due course.

Two sets of accounts and financial statements were laid between 11 and 15 May 2026, and they are due to be considered today. We are joined by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr. Seamus McCarthy, who is a permanent witness to the committee. I ask him to address these before I open the floor to members.

Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

First we have the financial statements of the Carbon Fund for 2024. These received a clear audit opinion. This is a nil account.

I draw the committee's attention to the fact that it was certified on 30 April of last year and is only being presented now as a result of an inquiry. It is a matter members of the committee might wish to address with the Accounting Officer when she appears. As I said, it is a nil account and I actually have a chapter on that in my annual report for 2024.

The second set of financial statements relates to the Insolvency Service of Ireland for 2024. These received a clear audit opinion.

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Do members wish to comment on either of those?

Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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I support the suggestion from the Comptroller and Auditor General that we seek clarification on why these accounts were presented so late.

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Do members agree to note the listing of accounts and financial statements? Agreed.

Moving to correspondence, there are a number of B items of correspondence to consider today. These have been received from Departments and public bodies. No. R2026/0244 is correspondence, dated 7 May 2026, received from Ms Oonagh Buckley, the Secretary General of the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment, responding to the committee's request for further information following its engagement with Inland Fisheries Ireland on 26 March 2026. We had a discussion on that and we will follow up with the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers, OPLA, to get a view on that. Is it agreed to note and publish the correspondence? Agreed.

No. R2026/0246, dated 8 May 2026, is correspondence received from Mr. Niall Cody, the chairperson of the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, responding to the committee's request for further information regarding submissions received under the Karshan disclosure opportunity. Do members wish to discuss this item? No. I will make a couple of points on this. When Mr. Cody appeared before us, I asked about what I see as an amnesty and the significant number of cases where issues with alleged bogus self-employment were resolved. While there has been some clarity about the areas and types of work where the misclassification of workers was rectified, it does not go into specific details. I note in the correspondence from Mr. Cody his statement that it is incumbent on us to protect every individual's identity. While that is certainly the case, the concern is there was possibly a large number of public servants and civil servants where there was a misclassification and this amnesty was availed of. We do not know under what Departments or what agencies those workers were misclassified. It is concerning that anyone in receipt of public funding would be misclassified for the purpose of PRSI. We need to go back to Revenue and get a further breakdown of that data to establish under what Department and agencies these misclassifications happened. Is that agreed? Agreed. Is it agreed to note and publish the correspondence, along with the agreed actions? Agreed.

No. R2026/0248, dated 11 May 2026, is correspondence received from Mr. Fergal Ó Coigligh, Secretary General of the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, in relation to the 2023 appropriation account for Vote 33 - Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht and Media. Deputy Byrne flagged this matter and we agreed to write back to the Department and ask why exactly there was a delay in the appropriation account and get clarification on that. Is it agreed to note and publish the correspondence, along with the proposed action? Agreed.

No. R2026/0249 is correspondence received from Mr. Seán O'Connor in the sports policy unit of the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, regarding a delay - I think these are numbered incorrectly-----

Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

I think the previous correspondence related to a follow-up on performance information, a useful document produced by the Department that gives a more comprehensive view of the sort of performance information it is using. The current document, No. R2026/0249, is the one that relates to the late laying of financial statements.

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Yes. They are the wrong way around. No. R2026/0249, dated 7 May, is the one we will write to the Department about. That was the delay in laying of Sport Ireland's annual report and financial statement for 2024. Do members agree to note and publish that correspondence, along with the agreed action? Agreed.

No. R2026/0256, dated 13 May 2026, is correspondence received from Mr. David Maloney, Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, responding to the committee's request for further information on the proceeds of the €3.4 million from the disposal of the Health Research Board's property in May 2023. Do members wish to discuss this? No. I will quickly raise one point. I note the property in question was the former headquarters of the Health Research Board and it had been vacated by the board in 2014. There seems to have been a fairly substantial delay in moving forward to dispose of that property. It took nine years, or thereabouts. We might write to the Health Research Board to get clarification on that. It had moved to a new premises and considerable time elapsed, We could ask for clarity and the rationale for that. Is it agreed to note and publish this correspondence, along with that course of action? Agreed. That concludes the B items for discussion today.

Moving to the work programme, on 28 May, the committee is due to engage with officials from the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission and representatives from the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment.

On any other business, a number of members have indicated they wish to raise a very concerning issue that has arisen overnight with regard to Irish Rail and the rail management system. It has been reported this morning that there is a write-down of €50 million with regard to that particular project. This is an issue we have dealt with extensively at the committee. A considerable sum, €31.5 million, has been spent on that project, which the Minister described as the brains of the control centre that has been established. This write-down raises serious concerns as to where the project and contract lie and the committee needs more clarity and clarification on that issue. We wrote extensively to the National Transport Authority, NTA, prior to our meeting today and following our previous engagement with it. We await the reply to those comprehensive questions with regard to this particular project.

This information is concerning. We know from the minutes from Irish Rail that the project manager had previously expressed zero confidence in the ability of the contracted company to deliver this particular project, given that it is already considerably over budget and considerably behind time. It also raises serious safety concerns, particularly for the first part of that project due to be rolled out, namely, CP1, Dublin to Rosslare. Serious risks had been identified on that particular line that were to be resolved and rectified with the rolling out of the first phase of this project. There are many concerns with regard to public money, the project and the issue of safety. Deputy Boland raised this earlier.

I call the Deputy.

Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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This is a matter that I have been raising concerns with for several months. The warning signs were there. Unfortunately, what was reported in the newspapers this morning is very alarming. The impairment looks like it is double the original IT budget. That is deeply concerning. Even more concerning is that Irish Rail has no confidence in this system as regards safety, including train safety. The taxpayer deserves answers on this. It calls into question oversight, procurement, contractor management and the contract in place. We have to have a very substantive answer from the NTA. Albeit Irish Rail is not subject to this committee, I suggest that it be invited voluntarily to attend this committee so that we can get a full picture of what went wrong. Something went seriously wrong.

Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I fully support Deputy Boland. This is a staggering sum of money. It came to light in the media, and fair play to the media for uncovering this information, but it is disappointing that it did not come through official channels that there was a potential writedown of €50 million regarding the traffic management system, which seems to form part of an overall project that is costing considerably more. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered. Part of the issue is that Irish Rail is not answerable to us as the Committee of Public Accounts, but the National Transport Authority, which funds Irish Rail, is. We certainly need to probe this further and invite the NTA and, as Deputy Boland said, Irish Rail in a voluntary capacity to come before us because there are significant questions that need to be answered. Is €50 million the total of the writedown or is there more to come in this?

Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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According to my information, it is going to cost an overall €100 million to complete this project. There is €50 million going to be written off. I ask that the committee write to the Department of Transport to see if it was aware of this. We are at the same stage as we have been over the past few weeks, with the Department seemingly not knowing what is going on or where public money is going. It is extraordinary that €50 million could be written off under a Minister. I just cannot believe it is happening again. We have seen enough with RTÉ and everybody else this week. It is another €50 million of taxpayers' money - hard-earned money that people are paying in taxes every week.

Catherine Ardagh (Dublin South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I concur with other members. Obviously, €50 million when we are in a cost-of-living crisis is a huge amount of money. Many more questions have been raised today. There is speculation about the overall cost of the project, but we need to find out for sure what the overall cost of the project is. The NTA needs to come to the committee and let us know that. What is the current status of the contractor, the Indra Group? Is it remaining or is the NTA looking for alternative contractors? It beggars belief that we are seeing time and again money being wasted on this scale. As others have said, more questions now need to be asked.

Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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We read the story in the newspaper this morning. It is something that I raised in the private session and that we have raised over the past couple of months. I am curious as to when Irish Rail came to the conclusion that it was going to have to write this off because that was not part of the full picture that we were getting from the NTA. Questions need to be asked of the NTA. I will be looking for the background to the €50 million. How much of it is labour costs? How much of it is software costs? How much of it is third party costs, contractor costs or billable time? We need a breakdown because €50 million is such a large sum. Recently, we talked about, I believe, €4 million with one of the institutes of technology. I think it was Athlone or Galway. Obviously, €50 million is nearly ten times that amount. I do not want cast aspersions on anyone or question anyone's decision-making, but we need to have the clear and full picture of what the costs entailed and the reason that the decision was ultimately made to write it off. It is such a significant amount of spending that people need to be asked, and held accountable for, why it happened like this.

James Geoghegan (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I wish to echo a lot of what the other members have said. A figure of €50 million is an astonishing amount of money that has been written off. What frustrates the public so often is when a scandal like this emerges, where is the accountability? It is incumbent on us in this committee to identify where the accountability lies for this. It is one thing saying that the Minister is responsible for everything here, but the NTA clearly came before us in January. I was looking back at some of the replies that the NTA gave to Deputy Boland when it was before us. What was said at that time was, "In hindsight, the level of granularity of the definition of requirements was not developed enough at the start." That is looking like the greatest understatement of the millennium. A total of €50 million has now been written off by Irish Rail on this project. There simply has to be accountability for this. Hopefully, our committee can unearth what went wrong here. Equally, there has to be accountability in relation to this. The public will not stand for no accountability for a €50 million loss.

Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Like others, I wish to start by commending Deputy Boland, who has been consistent in raising questions about this from the start. It is probably no surprise to her and many others that we are where we are this morning. While much more information has yet to come out on this project specifically, we can draw a comprehensive analysis at this point that, when it comes to IT projects, the State cannot manage them. In many ways, the tail is wagging the dog in that respect. There have been too many inconsistencies when it comes to failed IT projects.

When looking at the work, which is preliminary for now, that our committee and secretariat have done as regards IT services, the role of the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, OGCIO, is crucial. In any situation where we are discussing IT systems, whether in Irish Rail or anywhere else, I would like to see a seat designated to somebody representing that office. As far I understand it, that office is there to provide bodies or Departments with enough information at tender stage and development stage to get that project right. If we are extending an invite to Irish Rail and the NTA, I ask colleagues to support the idea that the OGCIO be here as well.

Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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A lot of my colleagues have said what I wanted to say. What is particularly disappointing is that, often, media reports emerge and we react to them here and it might be the first time that we as a body would be considering that issue, but this is not the first time we have considered this issue. We have had extensive engagement with all Departments regarding IT issues. We have had engagement with the NTA. As Deputy Farrelly said, Deputy Boland has asked very specific questions regarding this project. It is incredibly disappointing that this news has broken in a newspaper rather than by way of correspondence. I compliment the newspaper in question, but it is incredibly disappointing that that transparency surfaced in that way when we have had such extensive engagement.

I agree with the comments earlier. I suggest that the Department, the NTA, the Chief Information Officer and Irish Rail all be invited to a meeting of the committee. The way that this has surfaced has left so many questions that they now have to answer those questions more speedily than we might otherwise have dealt with the matter in the course of our work on the broader IT project.

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I agree with everything that has been said. Members have probably been conservative in their scathing criticism. A figure of €50 million of taxpayers' money would be a national scandal at any point, but particularly at this point in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. Anybody sitting at home looking at this has every right to be absolutely furious. There are systemic failures throughout the entire process going right back to the scoping. This is something that we are seeing consistently right across the board in terms of IT projects.

It is an absolute scandal. It is only right that we call for full accountability. Who knew what when? Why was a stop not called to this earlier to prevent the exposure of taxpayers' money to further waste? I note that the minutes of June last year talk about an audit that was carried out by a consultancy firm, WSP.

We need to get sight of the report that was compiled at that point. I am sure that plenty of flags were raised along the way. We need to get a line of sight of that audit. We also know that, subsequent to our engagement on the issue during which we raised considerable concerns, there was an announcement shortly afterwards that an independent review would be carried out on the rail management system. Are we to assume now that that review has been carried out, completed and is the basis for this €50 million write-down, write-off or waste of taxpayers’ money? We need to get sight of the terms of reference of that independent review and, if it has been completed, of its findings.

In my view, this also raises serious concerns about the ability of the company involved to honour any contract that it has. We know it has a very considerable contract for the delivery of next-generation ticketing. That is a concern I have. We need to ask serious questions about that and about this company's ability to deliver.

This is a scandal. We need to get more clarity on it. The members are aware that we have agreed that we are bringing in the OGCIO, along with the Department of public expenditure, on 11 June. We had also agreed previously that we would bring the NTA back in, given the multitude of issues and the fact that its fingerprints are right across many failures. I know its accounts are due to be presented, but that could well be after the summer recess. It is incumbent on us to have that as quickly as possible, and to write to Irish Rail. In my view, this again exposes a serious failure in governance and oversight of a multitude of agencies, commercial and semi-State. We see billions of taxpayers’ money without fiscal oversight. It raises serious questions as to why Irish Rail is not under the auspices of the Comptroller and Auditor General and, ultimately, accountable to the Committee of Public Accounts. We see that so many times across so many sectors. The committee has embarked on a piece of work under our remit and the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General. The ability to scrutinise serious expenditure of taxpayers’ money, in my view, is a very serious failing that needs to be rectified.

Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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We have all used strong words about the staggering amount of funding involved and so on. We need to operate outside our work programme on this issue. We need to set aside our schedule. This needs to be dealt with urgently by the committee. I do not think we should wait until September to have the NTA before us. We need to immediately write to Irish Rail to request that it come before us. We have compellability powers in relation to the NTA, and we need to use them. I certainly think we need to work with urgency on this. If we need to work outside our normal schedule for what we have in our line of sight in terms of witnesses and so on, we should do so.

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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I agree. It will mean shifting our work programme around. I will talk to the clerk and revert next week with some suggestions.

Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North-West, Fianna Fail)
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I made a proposal that we write to the four bodies identified and look for the earliest possible meeting. I think we should agree that proposal. Any other meetings we have scheduled can either be deferred by one week or we can hold an additional hearing. Waiting until September is way too long. Given the manner in which it has come out and the scale of the money we are talking about, we have to deal with it now. There may be other factors that they want to put on the record as well, and it is important that we deal with that. My proposal is that we write to the four bodies identified and have the earliest possible meeting.

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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It is also proposed that we write to the Department and the Minister on the issue. Is that agreed? Agreed. We will revert to the members next week once we have teased that out, given the seriousness of the issue. The suggestion of a meeting in September was on the basis that the NTA’s 2025 accounts would be presented at that time. However, in my view, this has to take precedence and priority.

Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I want to raise one more issue. Last week, Mr. Ciarán Breen from the State Claims Agency was before the committee. When I asked him about health and safety, he said that health and safety audits had been carried out every year. I would like him to give me a copy of the health and safety measures that were implemented every year. I received correspondence from a family who lost their son in 2009. This relates to a new fleet of aircraft that was purchased at a cost of €60 million for eight aircraft. Their son died on one of those aircraft. The family are very concerned about the fact that it was stated in the courts that there were no certificates of compliance. Mr. Breen said last week that there were certificates of compliance. I would like clarity on that. In relation to the health and safety measures that were carried out, I would like to know if anybody paid performance-related bonuses to the staff who implemented those health and safety measures at that time.

John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.