COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS debate

Business of Committee

Chairman

We are joined by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr. Seamus McCarthy, who is a permanent witness. He is joined by Ms Geraldine Mooney, deputy director of audit.

We have received no apologies for this meeting. The first item on the agenda is the minutes of the meeting of 24 October - we had no meeting last week - together with the follow-up questions sent to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. Are the minutes agreed to? Agreed.

The next item on the agenda is correspondence. The first items, Nos. 2513 and 2525, are correspondence received from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, including briefing documentation and an opening statement for today's meeting. We will note and publish the correspondence. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Category B is correspondence received from Accounting Officers and/or Ministers in follow-up on matters raised at meetings of the Committee of Public Accounts and other items for publication. At our last meeting we agreed to hold over some items for consideration this week. Items Nos. 2432 and 2465 are correspondence, dated 4 October 2019, received from from Ms Katherine Licken, Secretary General of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, enclosing a copy of the post-project review mentioned and referred to in our previous periodic report on the Palace Cinema project in Galway. I will make a number of brief observations.

Recommendation No. 7 on page 3, with which I am sure members will agree - I will highlight some of the recommendations made in what I stress is a 35 page document - is that performance indicators should be established for all grants funded by the cultural division and that data should be collected and collated in a systemic manner. This is a great recommendation, but in my view it does not grasp the point from the Committee of Public Accounts' point of view. This is a project within a Department that went seriously over budget. The Department's view is that within it there should be performance indicators within the cultural division. That is unacceptable from the point of view of the Committee of Public Accounts. Where mistakes like this have been made within a section in a Department, the lessons must be learned, not only within that section but also within the Department and across the public service. We will be writing to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform as a result of this report to say it must put a system in place to ensure that in a case where lessons are learned, the results will not be pigeonholed in one cubbyhole in one section in one Department. That is a method that ensures there will be no learning across the public service from mistakes that happen in particular areas. The confining of the recommendation is not acceptable from the point of view of the Committee of Public Accounts.

The Department also states there is to be a Department of Public Expenditure and Reform spending code update. We will ask for a copy of it if it has been completed. The reference is included at the bottom of page 3.

Page 4 of the report essentially refers to the fact that the Committee of Public Accounts dealt with this issue in its periodic report and recommendations and that a post-project review was carried out as a result. We are pleased that that has happened. However, the Department has confined its learning from the mistakes to a very narrow section within it.

On page 6 of the report - this is a theme that arises here every week - the Department states two independent reports were commissioned to examine the demand for cultural cinema in Ireland: the Neil Connolly and Maretta Dillon report in 2001 and the report produced by the English consultants Todd in 2004. We are great at spending money in employing consultants. There is no problem with employing a consultant, but when one has to come along a short time later and employ another to examine a closely related issue, that is where we consider no proper value for money is being achieved. We had representatives of a State organisation here only a few weeks ago that essentially had four consultants looking at the same thing over a two-year period. Our concern is the overuse of consultants. Some may think we do not need them, but everybody can agree that our concern is their overuse.

Table 5 on page 9 of the report deals with the original allocation of €4.3 million for the project which ended up costing €8.3 million. The table shows where funding was received from various bodies. When site costs are included, the project was originally projected to cost €6.26 million, but it ended up costing €10.3 million. Thast is a serious overrun.

We have picked up on this project because the Comptroller and Auditor General highlighted it for us initially. Paragraph 6.5 on page 15 of the report refers to the fifth departmental review carried out in 2018 of the various cost increases over a period of time. It took five reviews to get to the end. In his report the Comptroller and Auditor General outlined some of the issues at which the Department had looked. My conclusion is that after so many reviews and consultants, the response of the Department has been to confine any learning to one narrow section within it. That is a point I have already made. There is to be no learning across the public sector on the issue.

Perhaps Deputy Connolly might like to add something. We will publish this information today, if we have not already done so.

Deputy Catherine Connolly

I thank the Chairman for that overview. I was a councillor at the time and perhaps I am zoning in on the minutiae. It would be worth everyone's while to read the report. Who carries out the post-project review? Is it done within the Department?

Chairman

Yes, it would appear so.

Deputy Catherine Connolly

Was that as a result of our recommendation?

Chairman

We made the recommendation, but that is not to say that it may not have been done in any event. The committee did make a recommendation, however. The Comptroller and Auditor General compiled a chapter on it.

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

There is an obligation to review any significant capital project that is in the public spending code, but it does not always happen. Perhaps the focus of the chapter, along with the attention of the committee and its report, would have precipitated it.

Deputy Catherine Connolly

This is certainly one project where there should have been a post-project review from within the Department, particularly because of the history of involved. When looking at the conclusions and recommendations to give us a flavour-----

Chairman

To which page number is the Deputy referring?

Deputy Catherine Connolly

I am referring to page 23, where it is stated:

Overall, it is the assessment of this review that the Department complied with the project management framework in place at the time. [That is of concern to me, regardless of whether the Department complied with it ] The final assessment of this review considers that the main problem with the project was the fact that the original project promoters, while very well-intentioned and passionate about cinema, were not sufficiently skilled to manage a project as complex as Pálás. Solas had no demonstrable experience of operating a cinema or managing a large construction project ... [and there was a] lack of relevant experience.

Passion is great. I am always giving out about a lack of passion and a lack of vision, so that is marvellous. I want to take the focus off the people who came forward with passion and vision but who did not have the experience. I will go to the Department, which saw that passion and vision, but did not match it with oversight. In the sentence I have just quoted, I am being told the Department complied with what was in place at the time. I have made notes on it. I am almost about to give up. On the one hand, the Department is saying it has learned something from it while , on the other, it is stating that it complied with what was in place at the time.

Another concern relates to the funding. It has been suggested that the operator of the cinema was the second biggest contributor after the Department. In fact, Galway City Council was the second biggest contributor because it donated the site, which was worth almost €2 million, and it gave €500,000 on top of that. This is not even recognised in this review, which is a matter of great concern.

We knew generally at the time that there were problems with this project. This is what is important. How can projects go ahead if people, including lots of councillors, had concerns? They were demonised and ostracised and told they were not wearing the Galway jersey. This was the type of conversation that happened in respect of this project. We were the ones who endorsed the project in the beginning. We did so with vision. As the problems emerged, we called for accountability. Those who dared to ask questions were told they were not donning the jersey. This is a problem that must be learnt by all public representatives.

Consider, also, the bespoke nature of the project. Perhaps somebody could explain what that means. On page 22 of the review, it is stated:

The bespoke design of the building, while architecturally significant and award-winning, does present Element Pictures with a number of challenges as operators. The Pálás cinema was designed by De Paor architects and has been described as a contemporary moulded-concrete "tower house". [And the description of it is included] ... the facade may be somewhat intimidating to people and, as such, presents a barrier to entry. Element Pictures [who have been left with this baby on their hands now] are working to make the interior as warm and inviting as possible and encourage the public to explore and experience the building. The highly bespoke nature of the building added to the overall cost of the project and over the long-run means that upkeep and refurbishment of the building will be a costly undertaking, as there are a number of functionality issues that make the building less than optimal for its intended purpose.

The Department, which might as well be working for Fáilte Ireland, goes on to give all the advantages to the cinema - which we knew and that is why we have been promoting it - and tells us how important it is for the area of Galway and the cultural quarter. It tells us that there are four houses at the site and that these will be artisan dwellings. The Department does not mention, however, that these houses have been empty since the council purchased them in 2005 or 2006. In a housing crisis, these four houses are empty, but that is not mentioned at all.

Five reviews were carried out. Fair play to the Department - it was good and carried out the five reviews. The reviews, however, were limited and each time they concluded that they had no choice but to go ahead and not have a hole in the ground. They also tell a story that is not quite accurate with regard to the first contractor. The review provided a list of reasons as to why there was a problem, one of which was the recession. Earlier in the report, it cited the design problems, delays and other issues that led the builder to walk from the building. It was not the recession. I welcome the report, and it is a starting point, but we or the Comptroller and Auditor General need to go through it.

The promotion of Galway is unnecessary in this context. It is not part of a project review. Did we succeed? Yes, we did. The idea was to build, and we did build, but it was built over a period of 11 years at a cost of €11 million, with a housing crisis in Galway and a failure to purchase a building across the road that was better value at €450,000. All along the way there were implications for the decision to continue. Element Pictures are the operators now. I wish the company the best and have always done so. I have been in the building. None of this is about personal views, it is about how we got to the stage where a project that was to cost much less ended up costing €11 million. It is about how there was no project manager. Solas was offered a project manager by the Irish Film Board and refused to accept. I am just mentioning some of the issues. There is a list of notes, but I will not delay the meeting any longer.

This project raises so many questions and generally it raises very serious questions about the use of public funds in this manner. There have been five reviews into the project that allowed more money to be paid out. Within this there is also the city council that gave a site worth €2 million and gave another €500,000 even while there was a serious problem in Galway around lack of funds for serious issues. I have gone out on a limb for the arts and I have read the arts reports for the committee. This is not about arts versus something else, it is about making very sensible and practical decisions, with proper oversight from a Department. That did not happen in this instance.

The report is standard. It is a case of circle the wagons, nobody is to blame, nobody pays the price and Galway has a piece of infrastructure. We are all proud of Galway's culture, heritage and the part it plays. With every respect to Deputy Connolly, however, Galway does pretty well out of public funds when it comes to the arts. As I said at the meeting when we first raised this, it is an abomination. If it was the private sector, there would be disciplinary action and lay-offs, and whoever was responsible would have difficulty in getting into any kind of job in the future. Yet here we have a report that says not only did it cost €11 million, but we built this €11 million building for a private sector project.

The building is so beautiful that people are frightened to go into it. We will not be able to heat it. It will cost a substantial amount of money to maintain it. The building is to be operated for the profit of a different outfit at a preferential rent. That is a disgrace. It is endemic of what goes on in this room. Whenever the State is involved, we put the car into the hedge but nobody pays the price. We put it down to experience and state that we will know better next time. Without tangible sanction for the endemic mediocrity of the apparatus of the State, this is going to happen again. It is probably happening as we speak. Without doubt, the same unit will use its training in the dark arts of circling the wagons and making a bunch of muck look like a bowl of ice cream.

This committee has to make a recommendation. There must be tangible sanction when total incompetence is endemic to the extent that we have spent €11 million for a private sector company to make profit and we have offered a preferential rent. I have nothing against Galway and its great cultural prowess. If we want to spend this €11 million in Galway it would be better spent on light rail or public transport. Galway has a traffic problem that is proportionately 100 times worse than that of Dublin, not to mention housing, health and other challenges. It is a disgrace. We cannot say it strongly enough. This is a good example on a relatively small scale of what we happens on a massive scale with projects like the national children's hospital - we throw good money after bad. The Taoiseach recently stated that the cost of the latter is heading towards €2 billion. The Deputy beside me has said it will cost more than that. God knows who will be in this room to pick up the pieces when it is finished, or how many billions it will eventually cost. The Pálás Cinema must be seen as a classic example of the incompetence of the apparatus of the State and its inability to admit when it is wrong. There must be tangible sanctions to deter such poor management practices in the future. That tangible sanction is what is missing from the work of the State.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

I will be very quick because the issues have been outlined well. To find the origin of the problem we have to go back to the original decision rather than the reviews. It was the same building before this started as it was when the reviews were carried out. Over and over again we see a failure to anticipate or understand resource requirements. It is all very well to carry out a review afterwards. That is fine. The origin of many of these problems lies in the decision to take the project on and in the initial scoping. It would be useful to know if that unit of the Department has a function in identifying how those failures can be prevented in the first instance. I keep on saying that we have made a national pastime of creating problems and then trying to resolve them in reverse. In a lot of other countries projects are scoped out, the resource implications are considered, things are planned and governments do not end up with a very costly problem at the tail end.

Chairman

I wish to make one or two final comments. We will obviously write to the Secretary General of the Department about the implementation of the recommendations listed on page 3. Recommendations have been made and we want to see what is happening. That is a minor point. We should write to the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform about this issue and send this report to him. There are two issues that have been highlighted here. Deputy Connolly has noted that the value of the local authority's contribution is not dealt with in this report. We should insist that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform-----

Deputy Catherine Connolly

It is dealt with in that one sentence, which states that Element Pictures, not the city council, was the biggest contributor.

Chairman

Very well. We want to ensure that projects take a whole-of-Government approach if funding comes from various sources and not just the line Department. We also want the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to have a policy on reports. A public spending update is to be published, or perhaps it has already been published. One recommendation is that training should be mandatory. While training is currently provided, it is not mandatory. Some of the people working on projects do not bother to undergo training on the public spending code. That is insufficient.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform should insist that every project review, evaluation or value-for-money report carried out in a Department must include a section on the whole-of Government lessons from what went wrong in the unit in question. Such reports must be considered inadequate without this section. The public service is designed to confine a mistake it to the one unit in which it takes place. We have seen this in the HSE. When something goes wrong in a hospital, there is not even a mechanism in place to share the lessons learned with other hospitals. We are seeing here that when something goes wrong in the cultural division, the issue is confined to that unit of that Department. That is guaranteed to ensure that there is no whole-of-Government learning. We will ask the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to ensure that spending codes include a requirement for every report to have a section outlining the overall lessons for the public service. Unless there is a practice of sharing of lessons learned, the current system is bound to make the same mistakes in some other Department.

Deputy Catherine Connolly

I wish to make a final comment. The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht did carry out reviews, which were very welcome. Those reviews highlighted problems. Those involved did try to do this. There is a bigger issue here. This took place in a political atmosphere in which the project had to go ahead. We need to look at that element, as in the case of the national children's hospital.

Perhaps the Comptroller and Auditor General could comment on project reviews. I do not know what should go into a project review, but this seems to consist of Fáilte Ireland telling us how good Galway is. The report notes that the city council "owns four properties immediately adjacent to Pálás and intends to develop these". This is a post-project review and nobody seems to have had the wit to ask why the four properties are empty. When that type of review is carried out and not one question is asked about this, one begins to question our whole way of doing things. That might be a bit unfair, but we decided to have a review. The project review says how wonderful the project is for Galway and that particular quarter, as opposed to asking how this happened.

Chairman

It is wonderful, but-----

Deputy Marc MacSharry

That is typical of reviews.

Deputy Catherine Connolly

Yes.

Deputy Marc MacSharry

"Wit" is the perfect word. Sometimes the language in this committee is far too politically correct to capture the disastrous approaches that are taken. This is the standard three-card trick of saying how wonderful things are. This is not a bit wonderful. There is nothing wonderful about it.

Chairman

We have discussed this matter. We will get correspondence back from the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht about the implementation of the narrow recommendations, and we will suggest that there should be wider lessons for the Department and for the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

Deputy Catherine Connolly

Can we ask about the four empty houses?

Chairman

Absolutely. Given the fact that the unit made reference to this in the report, we want to know what consideration was given to that matter.

No. 2467 is correspondence from Mr. Derek Moran, Secretary General of the Department of Finance, dated 14 October. The letter responds to our request for information on fees paid to barristers. We agreed to note and publish this two weeks ago. This concerns fees paid in respect of the Apple case. We held it over because Deputy Kelly, who raised this matter, was not here. Members will want to discuss this.

Deputy Alan Kelly

My apologies. I came in literally two minutes after the Chairman finished with this item. I was caught in traffic.

This has been going on for a long time. I have been asking questions about this since before last summer. To provide a little bit of context, this information was previously given out in response to parliamentary questions. When I looked for a subsequent update on the continuing costs, it was denied to me under the general data protection regulation, GDPR.

I also asked questions regarding the two-payments system when it comes to public servants, that is, one can only get one payment if, for instance, one works for a university, is a member of a board or anything like that. I understand that a number of people who are being paid under this actually do work in other public sector roles as well. I was absolutely shocked that this information was denied to me. I was further shocked that the Attorney General's advice was that this information cannot be given. I had help from the Ceann Comhairle in this regard, as he felt that questions should be answered. However, when it came to the advice from the Attorney General, that is where it stopped because, as we all know, such advice can never be published.

I brought this matter to the attention of the Committee of Public Accounts because I felt that it was necessary to use this forum to get some leverage as regards how we are going to get this information. Frankly, the volume of money that is being paid is a scandal but nobody knows where the money is being spent, who it has been given to, for what and in what detail. Furthermore, this matter creates a worrying precedent in cases where people are being paid, if they are constituted as individuals. This precedent that has been set by the Government means that if one constitutes oneself as an individual for payment purposes-----

Deputy Marc MacSharry

One is in the clear.

Deputy Alan Kelly

-----one does not have to declare and the payment will not be made public. Consequently, were Sean Fleming a sole trader who was giving advice or doing anything for the State, we will never know how much he is being paid because the GDPR will prevent us from knowing, which is insane. This is not the reason GDPR exists.

I must thank three journalists, namely, Danny McConnell, political editor, Fiachra Ó Cionnaith and Elaine Loughlin, who work for the Irish Examiner, for pursuing this matter. Subsequently, they got the Data Protection Commissioner effectively to state she does not understand why the advice has been issued or in what context and that it is not justifiable. The Irish Examiner ran a story on this issue earlier this week.

We must pursue this matter in the strongest way possible. These are serious public sums and this will go on for years. A dangerous precedent is being set whereby others will be able to use this loophole, potentially, to not have the amount of the payments made or costs awarded to them for various different items of work being made known. In addition, from a Data Protection Commission point of view, it looks like this situation is not appropriate. I am in the hands of the committee but we really need to pursue this matter because frankly, such a situation cannot go on. It is against the public interest, it is against what GDPR is being used for and we will not know what people are being paid in this case. Furthermore, I suspect the Department uses the non-two-payments rule for public servants to the letter of the law in many cases but yet, when it comes to situations in which people working in public bodies constitute themselves as individuals for other payments, the two-payments system does not apply to them and we will not be able to tease that out. It is a four legs good, two legs bad scenario and that cannot be allow to happen. I thank the Chair and shall take his advice.

Chairman

I call Deputy MacSharry and then Deputy Catherine Murphy.

Deputy Marc MacSharry

In the brief discussion we had the last day when this matter arose in Deputy Kelly's absence, I made many similar points. At best, we are seeing the politically opportunistic use of legislation that was not intended for that purpose. At worst, and as with actions we saw in the Dáil during the week, through the use of articles of the Constitution on money messages, it defines life in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy. I do not know what actions are open to us as a committee, but the system is all-powerful. The Office of the Attorney General is effectively the commander-in-chief in respect of all matters of definition. The intended integrity of elected representatives and the institutions within the Oireachtas itself - committees, the Dáil, the Seanad and everything else - are being undermined hand over fist as a result of legal advices, be they from the Attorney General's office or, sometimes, the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers, OPLA, which sees the system as its client rather than the messengers of the people, those being, the elected representatives who try to raise these issues and ensure that information is made available to the public regarding the amounts of money paid to individuals, companies or whatever on their behalf or who exercise the will of the people through the tools available to us.

The money message issue, which is not the business of this committee this week per se, and the issue before us, which can only be described at best as the politically opportunistic use of GDPR, are deplorable and need to stop immediately.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

We cannot have accountability without transparency, and the absence of transparency opens up questions that might not even be valid. No group of people are better able to advise themselves on the law than the legal profession. They are in a commanding position. I have received replies to parliamentary questions on consultancy firms advising various Departments on GDPR. The committee must get to grips with this issue, given that it will become the new “commercial sensitivity” element. We have been getting responses about “commercial sensitivity” for years.

Deputy Marc MacSharry

Absolutely.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

Now, GDPR is another component of that. I am an advocate of people having their rights to privacy protected but there is a balance to be struck that reflects the public good and the public purse. We need to get to grips with this aspect, since it will continue being rolled out. For years, we have seen that doctors’ practices-----

Chairman

These are GPs.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

Deputy Alan Kelly

Absolutely.

Chairman

The legislation was not introduced to prevent every payment to every individual from ever being disclosed again. It was not intended for that. To be straight about it, I see what is happening in respect of the non-disclosure of fees paid to barristers, on the advice of the Attorney General, as the legal profession in the employ of the State and the barristers who are working on behalf of the State working together to protect one another. It is as simple as that. In the letter from Mr. Derek Moran, he referred to it being necessary and proportionate. Regarding the test of what is proportionate, if someone is saying that a person getting €1 million from the State – some barristers at tribunals got €2 million or €3 million over time – is not proportionate in the public interest and that it would be disproportionate to the individual who received a cheque of €3 million to have his or her name published, that is an abuse. I know what is happening. The legal profession is happy to spend the next five years in the Supreme Court and wherever else it goes to ensure that this does not come out. It just wants to run down the clock, during which time it will continue seeking not to publish the figures.

In the first instance, we will get a response from the DPC. Arising from that, the Committee of Public Accounts, of all the committees in the Oireachtas, has an absolute duty to verify to whom taxpayers’ money is being paid and for what purpose. Our committee will have a role. If we are ultimately satisfied that the legislation is not sufficiently drafted to ensure public accountability for public funds, that issue will have to be revisited. We will have a little bit of a road to travel first, but the intention of GDPR is not to protect barristers. It is an abuse of the system by the legal profession, full stop. It is the most powerful lobby and would not have been as quick were this about doctors’ fees or payments to other individuals.

Deputy Alan Kelly

Yes.

Chairman

It is because the legal professionals, both in the employ of the State and the other category, are all the one club.

Deputy Alan Kelly

Deputy Marc MacSharry

The profession is definitely as well resourced as it is honourable.

Chairman

I take on board Deputy Connolly’s point. We have a road to travel on this matter.

Next is No. 2482 from Dr. Deirdre Keyes, chief executive of the Kildare and Wicklow ETB, providing information requested by the committee regarding non-compliant procurement of €1.8 million as set out in the 2016 audit accounts. We will note and publish that, as we are doing a body of work. Perhaps Deputies would like to comment.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

Deputy Catherine Connolly

I agree with everything that has been said and our role is to keep an eye on the costs. To go back to the Pálás Cinema, we had the exact same issue. The project started at a certain price and there were cost overruns. All of this was set out in the report. Costs arose in parallel with it, which the architect for the Department subsequently said were justified.

I forget which witnesses who came before us were asked whether the cost would stay below €2 billion. They were not in a position to say it would not. They were very upfront and told us they could not state that.

Our role is just to keep an eye on it, to check and to ask questions. The bigger picture, and excuse the bad pun with regard to the Pálás Cinema, is that once it is decided that a project will going ahead, it will go ahead regardless. In Galway, we were told we could not have a hole in the ground and it had to go ahead. In Dublin, we have been told we need the children's hospital without any analysis of the consequences of continuing with the decision or looking at an alternative or the implications for the health of children in other hospitals. Sometimes it is very difficult to see the wood for the trees.

Chairman

We will note and publish it and, as I have said, the NPDHB will come before the committee in a couple of weeks.

No. 2484 B is directly related so we will not have a extensive discussion on it. It is from Ms Eilish Hardiman, chief executive of Children's Health Ireland, CHI, and is dated 17 October 2019. It is in response to our request for information relating to each consultancy project undertaken by CHI since 2016. This is also in connection with making sure that while the building is built that it will work on behalf of patients. CHI will come before the committee. It is interesting that Ms Hardiman has said there is a lot of work involved in gathering the information on the consultancy projects. We will have the information at the end of next week. We will note and publish this. CHI will come before the committee shortly. There is another stream of major costs with regard to the hospital that will pile up into a major amount. These are non-construction costs. This is why we need an overall picture of where things stand when it comes before the committee in a couple of weeks.

No. 2485 B is from Ms Carol Hanney, chief executive of City of Dublin Education and Training Board, providing an information note on the processes and procedures in SUSI for grant application cases involving difficult family situations. We are all aware of cases where families have fallen out, a son or daughter might not be in good communication with the parents and an application for a SUSI grant is held up. We have asked what SUSI does about these hardship cases and this letter makes for difficult reading. It states the applicant can provide information to confirm parental divorce or separation by providing the separation or divorce agreement, a court order or a barring order. We are talking about GDPR and SUSI is requesting college students to provide details of a barring order issued in the family court, which is a private matter, to a Government body to achieve a grant. Talk about abuse not just of GDPR but the family court procedures. For SUSI as a State body to ask for detailed information about third parties, as the student is the applicant, with regard to a barring order between two other individuals is outrageous in the extreme. We are asking it to reconsider this.

SUSI states the student can provide details of the dissolution of a civil partnership, whether a parent is in receipt of a deserted wife's allowance or a one-parent family payment. Sometimes people go their way without a legal agreement for separation or divorce. In this case, a student can get a letter from a solicitor confirming that legal proceedings are pending or from the family mediation service, and separate utility bills to show they are living apart. No wonder people experience difficulty when they are being asked for proof of barring orders. It does not address the reality of students in houses where there is no communication between all of the original family members. It makes it worse to speak about getting copies of family law court barring orders as evidence.

Deputy Catherine Connolly

I had this marked and the Chairman has addressed it.

No. 2487 B is from Mr. Ray Mitchell of the Health Service Executive, providing information requested by the committee. There is quite a bit here. The HSE witnesses will be here in a couple of weeks so we will be able to interrogate them further on these matters, but we will note and publish the correspondence for today. An information note has been provided on risk analysis in respect of decision-making for public private partnerships, PPPs, for health centres. Regarding the chapter in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General for this year, the witnesses will be coming in to deal with this in a couple of weeks. I will confirm what else is in the letter, sighing in the process. There is a reference to cash advances to section 38 organisations. Deputy Kelly mentioned this matter. On the top of page 3, there is a reference to the total payments to the section 38 and 39 organisations in 2018, amounting to €3.258 million for section 38 organisations and €1.025 million for section 39 organisations. We asked for details on cash advances. The letter is internally self-contradictory because it states all cash balances are to be neutral at the end of the year and then it states there was €73.6 million outstanding at the end of 2018. The essence of what is being said is that one gets an advance during the year that is to be paid back by the end of the year. They give us the year-end outstanding balance saying it will come off next year. Therefore, it is not neutral in the year, although that is the impression the HSE has been giving us up to now. We will tease this out further.

There is further information on the cross-border initiative and its cost. There is a note on the arrangements for holiday cover in respect of home help. I will raise this myself again. It is a new departure to cancel cover for people. Cover is provided when home helps go on holidays on a priority basis. That was not the case in the past. We will be coming back to this with the HSE in a couple of weeks.

It is also noted that we asked two questions that are more appropriate to the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, namely, the number of times in which the Minister has invoked section 181 powers to grant permission and the issue of gender balance on the board. Those are matters on which the Department will have to reply to us.

Mr. Walsh gives further information on the current status of the 101 recommendations of the 2016 report. That information is here. Our fifth query concerned a breakdown of the categories of respondents to the consultation regarding An Bord Pleanála's website. That response can be read and includes details on the type of people who access the website.

A note on gender balance is also included and the Minister will be asked to answer that query. Copies of the resumés of all of the board members are attached, as is a breakdown of the number of decisions of the board accepting an inspector's recommendation. People will be interested in this topic. Mr. Walsh has stated that in 89% of cases the report of the inspector is accepted but not in the other 11%. An acceptance rate of about 90% is fairly high and it would be inevitable that the board would be entitled to make its own decision on some cases.

Mr. Walsh's letter next addresses the issue of strategic infrastructure decisions. Some 84% of all such applications are granted, with 16% refused. That is interesting because there is a presumption abroad that under the strategic infrastructure process, if there is a meeting with the board, the details of an application are gone through and that application is then submitted on the basis that confirmation would almost be certain. That is not quite the case, as some 16% of applications are refused at the end of the process.

Our next query dealt with the number of cases that have been with An Bord Pleanála for more than a year. There are 74 of those and details are given in the correspondence. Some of those instances are referral cases and some involve complex legalities. All of the information is given in the correspondence.

-----to both of them. We will thank the board for the letter and follow up those particular points.

No. 2506, is from Moyagh Murdock, chief executive officer of the Road Safety Authority, dated 25 October, providing information regarding the policing by the authority of the foreign registered vehicles working in this State. Two and a half pages of a letter have been provided giving details of inspections. For those who have an interest in this matter, the best thing we can do is note it today and publish it. They may come back to us but we are not experts on the inspections of vehicles, whether they are registered in Ireland or outside the State. A legitimate point was raised with us regarding the regime of inspections. There is a reply there, which we will note and send to the organisation that contacted us on the matter and perhaps we will have further communication from it at a later stage. That is agreed.

No. 2507 is from John McKeon, Secretary General of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, relating to our request for the business case for the public services card. He makes it very clear in his letter there is no single business case document relating to the development of the SAFE identity authentication process for the card. He sets out that the Comptroller and Auditor General covered this in his report three years ago, and it is analysed time by time. The Secretary General will be before us later when we will discuss the public services card. We will note and publish that correspondence and discuss it later.

No. 2508 is from Steven Sheridan of the Housing Agency responding to a request for a list of approved housing bodies, AHBs, registered with the interim regulator. He clarifies the regulator's office operates on a voluntary code and AHBs are signed up to it rather than registered. There are 275 bodies signed up to the code. The Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government is responsible for maintaining the register of all AHBs, of which there are now 551, but we know that 95% of the assets are in the bodies signed up to the code. The information is set out in a link to the website.

No. 2512 is from John McKeon, Secretary General, of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, who will be here shortly, regarding grants paid to travel operators in respect of free travel. That arose from discussion on the matter. We will discuss the public services card and free travel with him. We will note and publish that correspondence and it can be discussed later.

Some category C correspondence has been held over for a little while. No. 2464 is from an individual, dated 14 October, on behalf of a group based in Donegal called the Great Arch action committee, which is requesting the committee to investigate a planning decision by Donegal County Council regarding a proposed pathway to a viewing point for the Pollet Great Arch, Fanad. Local authorities are not within the remit of the committee. We must write back stating that it is not within our remit to examine that matter and directing the group accordingly. It has obviously talked to the local authority, the ombudsman or whoever it believes is the appropriate body but it is not this committee.

No. 2479 is from persons calling themselves B and C, dated 17 October. Members will recall the individuals had previously corresponded with the committee regarding the University of Limerick, UL. The committee was copied with correspondence that was sent to the Minister for Education and Skills. We have had other correspondence relating to UL in recent weeks. While there has been an effort to conduct a mediation in the college it seems it has not reached a successful conclusion. I propose we add these matters relating to third level colleges, including UL, to our work programme. The UL issue seems to be ongoing. We will not get to complete that issue between now and Christmas but we can have it on our work programme for the new year.

No. 2488 is from Deputy Bríd Smith, relating to an inquiry into Our Lady's Hospice, Harold's Cross. At our meeting on 19 September, we noted an update from the HSE that the case is currently with the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, who is addressing some further queries with An Garda Síochána and there was no further information at that time. The HSE is scheduled for a meeting with us on 5 December and we will request an update on this for that meeting. Members will note the matter is with the Garda and the DPP. This committee will not have a role in it but we will get an update on it from the HSE as our meeting with it in a few weeks time.

No. 2490 is from an individual, dated 20 October, who raises some points about the Government's spending policies. The individual raises issues that have been before this committee on several occasions previously. He refers to the cost of providing broadband and the cost of the children's hospital. We will note it and circulate it to members of the committee. It is not for publication but members can take it into consideration. We will not be specifically following it up but it relates to spending of Government money on matters already covered by the committee.

No. 2491 is from Deputy Cullinane, dated 21 October, regarding media allegations that RTÉ is facilitating tax avoidance. Perhaps the Deputy would like to speak on this topic.

Deputy David Cullinane

This relates to an arrangement, which I have raised previously, regarding top presenters who can set up companies for the purpose of paying a portion of salary as corporation tax and not as income tax. The issue was examined in other areas of the public sector in the past where there was a mix of public and private. It is timely it has come up today given the announcement by the director general of RTÉ that there will a 15% pay cut for these top presenters, which most people will welcome. The Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment is the first port of call for the director general. We have examined this issue in the past and established that more than 50% of RTÉ’s funding comes from the taxpayer.

It has changed from year to year. In the good times it had much more advertising revenue and when the advertising revenue dropped, the proportion of licence fee was more than 50%. The point is well made. We will come back to that.

No. 2494 is correspondence from Deputy Catherine Murphy, dated 29 October, in respect of matters raised with the Department of Justice and Equality by a whistleblower in the Prison Service.

Deputy Catherine Murphy

The correspondence came to me and given that the Committee of Public Accounts was already dealing with the matter, I forwarded it.

Chairman

That is fine. We will keep it under review.

No. 2497 is a matter that should be dealt with in private session.

Nos. 2500 and 2511, dated 23 October, are from an individual with an inquiry regarding the school transport system. We have already written to the Department requesting a note on whether Bus Éireann's auditors and the Department are satisfied that the scheme profits are not or have not been used to cross-subsidise Bus Éireann since the scheme began. I propose we note the correspondence and wait for the Department to respond.

There was an article in a Sunday newspaper on 3 November in which it was stated that three Oireachtas committees are seeking answers to school bus scheme profits claim. The Committee of Public Accounts is on the case. We have mentioned it. The Joint Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport is looking at the matter from a Bus Éireann point of view and the Joint Committee on Education and Skills is also examining it. We are not going to do any more. I do not believe in three committees of this House dealing with one item of correspondence so this committee will take no further action. If we get a response to the last letter, well and good, but it is not fair on the Oireachtas to have three different committees working on the same topic. I understand what is involved. The matter affects the Committee of Public Accounts, Bus Éireann and the school bus service but there needs to be a system here to ensure that members of three different committees are not reading the same correspondence at three different meetings in the one week. We will wait for a response.

We are nearly there. We said that we would have the witnesses come in about now. The next item is the financial statements and accounts since the previous meeting. A few have been received. The first relate to Fáilte Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority . Its turnover for the year was €140 million. It received a qualified audited opinion on the basis of its deferred pension asset. Fáilte Ireland's accounts do not recognise pension asset funding in respect of its pension scheme. We have seen that previously. It is a standard one.

Next is the Mental Health Commission. Again, this is a qualified audit opinion. The cost of the superannuation entitlements are not properly recognised versus international accounting standards as the standard of qualification in the health service.

I thank the Comptroller and Auditor General. I appreciate that.

The next set of accounts is Traveller' Protection Fund and Travel Agents' and Tour Operators' Bond Accounts. There is a clear audit opinion in this regard.

Next is the National Concert Hall, for which there is also a clear audited opinion.

We will discuss it in private session in a minute. I know who attends and does not attend meetings. If we check the record over decades, Government Deputies may not always have been the best attenders at meetings of the Committee of Public Accounts, possibly because they are taking on their own Ministers' line Departments week in and week out.

Let us get the information first, given that there have been changes to the scheme.

The work programme is the same as it was last week. We have representatives of the Courts Service scheduled to appear on 14 November. On 21 November we have representatives of the Charities Regulator before us. We have agreed to have representatives of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment before us that afternoon, rather than hold a special meeting on the Tuesday evening. Those sessions might not take too long and we might put a time limit on both. On 28 October we will have representatives of the Revenue Commissioners before us in what will be a very important meeting. On 5 December - a big day - we will have representatives of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, the Department of Health and Children's Health Ireland before us. We will have a separate session with representatives of the Health Service Executive to deal with the development of primary care services. We have asked for updates because the representatives of the HSE has already been here to discuss its financial statements. Therefore, it will be a second round and the HSE is asking what specifically we want to discuss on that occasion. It would be helpful if we did not just go back over what we did before the summer. We have mentioned a few items, for example, measures to reduce the incidence of cases involving clinical negligence that may lead to State claims, matters related to CervicalCheck, the oversight of section 38 and section 39 bodies and home help services, including the changes made during the year. I also want to receive an update on private ambulance contracts which have been in place for years and not renewed. I have asked parliamentary questions about this issue. They went out to tender and there was a two-year process, but I believe that process has collapsed. I do not know what has happened. Any member will be able to raise an issue in order that representatives of the HSE will be prepared on the day.

Deputy David Cullinane

On the point about being prepared for the meeting with representatives of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board and the Department of Health, we are learning lessons that we need to be as well prepared as possible and receive as much information as possible in advance of meetings. I know that can be problematic because when we receive information, it is then leaked beforehand. Perhaps that is why they will not send it to us until the last minute. However, there have been additional claims submitted. Before the witnesses come, we will need the most up-to-date information on the additional claims made, what they were for and the areas in which they were made in order that we will not be trying to drag it out of them and not spend half the session dragging out information that should have been presented to us in advance. I do not mind if we receive it one day beforehand because at least we will have it, but we need this information. What happens at times is that we end up wasting an awful lot of the time of the lead questioner, whoever it might be, in trying to obtain information that we should receive in advance. I ask that we make that request.

Chairman

That is agreed. If there are particular issues members want to raise at that meeting, they should contact the secretariat. The HSE witnesses will say they were here to discuss the annual financial statements and that if there are further specific issues the committee would like to raise, they want us to tell them what they are. It would be helpful if they were to be given advance notice in order that we could receive the briefing material in advance. As they will be here in the afternoon, it will be a long day. Representatives of the the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board will be before us that the morning, while representatives of the HSE will be before us in the afternoon. I ask members to mark the date in their diaries.

Deputy David Cullinane

Will it only be about the national children's hospital or will we be able to raise the long list of health issues in Waterford also?

Chairman

In the morning session we will have representatives of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, the Secretary General of the Department of Health and representatives of Children's Health Ireland and the HSE before us. In the separate second session we will discuss the Comptroller and Auditor General's report on primary care centres, to which Deputy Munster referred, and other matters we did not deal with specifically.

Deputy David Cullinane

I am seeking clarity on the matter. As we will discuss the financial statements, the discussion will not be confined to the national children's hospital. Is that correct?

Chairman

We will discuss the financial statements of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, not the HSE. In the morning session we will discuss the national children's hospital, while in the afternoon we will discuss primary care services with the HSE, not the Department of Health, and other specific items we will raise with the HSE in the meantime. We had a general discussion on the HSE's financial statements and this will be a follow-up session.

There being no other items to discuss, we will go into private session for a few minutes. We will then take a five-minute break and start public session with the witnesses at about 11.15 a.m. A lot has been covered in the last two hours. Sometimes the first two hours can be important.

The committee went into private session at 11.10 a.m and resumed in public session at 11.30 a.m.

COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS debate - Thursday, 7 Nov 2019

Business of Committee

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

Mr. Seamus McCarthy

COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS debate -
Thursday, 7 Nov 2019