Results 14,181-14,200 of 27,087 for speaker:David Cullinane

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: Otherwise, our discussion will go all over the place and will not be constructive.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: A sum of €700,000.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: None.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: I was going to make the point, which An Teachta Murphy has made, that the valuation was based on the zoning and the use. The Accounting Officer for the Department, the Secretary General, when he was here, however, was absolutely adamant that they were paying at market value. It strikes me now that maybe they were not, given the information we have, which to me is serious. What was fishy,...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: From the local government Vote.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: I would be very happy with that.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: I have a question which is related to the HSE's report. It runs to hundreds of pages and contains a huge amount of interesting information which, in itself, would almost warrant a follow-up meeting with the HSE and the Department. For example, some of it deals with the expenditure of €176 million on private ambulances, which is an extraordinary sum. There are issues surrounding...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: A synopsis of the key issues needs to be made by the secretariat. We can then decide whether we should come back to it.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: It brings us back to the discussion about resources and capacity.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: My concern is that when we ask Accounting Officers questions, they should be able to answer on the day, but they do not. It is very easy for them to say they will send the correspondence afterwards. It is our job to hold them to account for money that is spent. There is no point in them giving us information afterwards because it is never put to the test or scrutinised. We receive a large...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: We have sessions in which we are meant to scrutinise these issues, but Accounting Officers say they do not have the information to hand and have to get back to us. It is easy for them to do so. They go out through the door and we receive the stuff afterwards, but we do not follow up on it because we have too much to do and our staff are too busy. How efficient are we in that regard?

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: I do

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: I do indeed want to speak to it.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: It is unhelpful that the Accounting Officer has sought to personalise this from his perspective. I listened on to the clips that were sent on to me by the local radio station.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: To provide the background, last week I raised concerns about the fact that a report by the HEA into research and development, spin-out companies and process at the institute and which was supposed to be in September 2017 has still not been published. We are now in October of the following year and there is still no report. The concerns I raised at our previous meeting were not necessarily...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: There is a report to be compiled by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: I thank the members for their comments. I agree with Deputies when they say that we cannot respond to every criticism levelled at members of the Committee of Public Accounts because we all get criticised-----

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: -----and as a body we get criticised.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: In this particular case, when the criticism is personalised and a member is singled out and then accused of doing down their own city and country because they have asked genuine questions about concerns that have been articulated by people in an institute, and we are just doing our job, that is serious. It does have implications for us and needs to be responded to. This is an Accounting...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (11 Oct 2018)

David Cullinane: That is the way to do it. We sought the meeting to discuss the governance arrangements between the HEA and the Department. There were some media reports following Dr. Love's resignation that there was tension. Obviously, we want to understand what is happening. We have been looking for reforms and changes in governance in a lot of areas and if there is an impediment or block, we will want...