I welcome everybody and I apologise to our guests for the delay in beginning, but we had some matters to deal with in private session. Before we begin, I would to inform the committee that we have received correspondence from Mr. Seán Aylward, Secretary General of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, arising from proceedings of this committee when officials from the Irish Prison Service and the Department were before us. Questions were raised about a drawdown contract for the development of Loughan House, and the rollover of that contract, which involved contracts worth in excess of €100 million. We were informed at the time that the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General was also looking at the matter. We looked for further information on the nature of the contracts with KMCS, a company that acts as a technical adviser for many of these drawdown contracts.
We received correspondence from Mr. Aylward dated 28 May, and the committee has decided to note it and publish it. It contains information that the technical adviser on those drawdown contracts did not itself have a drawdown contract. In spite of that, it received payments totalling over €3 million dealing with some of the capital projects that were the subject of the drawdown contracts. We will be coming back to this issue again in the autumn when we obtain the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General. I believe he wishes to bring to public attention the fact that there are issues here regarding Department of Finance guidelines and EU procurement procedures.
Mr. John Buckley (An tArd Reachtaire Cúntas agus Ciste) called and examined.