The principal item on the agenda is the draft report on the future of section 481 tax relief in respect of the film industry. However, before we come to that, we have a couple of other items with which to deal. Apologies have been received from Deputies Finneran, Nolan, Lenihan, Twomey, McGrath and Burton. Some members are representing the committee at a conference in Rome today and tomorrow.
Item No. 1 on the agenda is the minutes of the meetings of 30 October and 5 November 2003 which have been circulated. Can I take it that they are agreed? Agreed.
Item No. 2 is correspondence. We have received correspondence from the Bank of Scotland. There was earlier correspondence inviting us on a fact finding trip to the United Kingdom. The correspondence now is to the effect that the bank would prefer to postpone this until January when it may be possible to have the briefing meeting with us in Dublin. We will come back to this when we receive further information.
The second item of correspondence is from the parliamentary panel within the framework of the World Summit on the Information Society, a seminar to be held in Geneva from 10 to 12 December 2003. As no other Oireachtas committee has specific responsibility for the information society, it has been referred to us because it comes under the remit of the Department of the Taoiseach and the Government Chief Whip for whose affairs this committee is responsible. If a member is interested in attending, please let the clerk know. Can we have agreement in principle to approve somebody to attend if someone so chooses on behalf of the committee? I understand we are at the maximum level of our travel budget for the year and I will have to go to the committee of committee Chairmen to seek funding to cover the trip if members decide to take up this proposal. If members indicate that they want to go to the committee secretariat, we can approve the costings at the next meeting in two weeks time.
The next item is a letter from the European Parliament in connection with a visit of a delegation of the economic and monetary affairs committee of the European Parliament on 25 and 26 November 2003. This has been mentioned at previous meetings. On the Tuesday evening, 25 November, IBEC is hosting a dinner for the delegation to which it will invite members of this committee. I do not yet know the venue. We have already agreed that at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, 26 November, we will meet the delegation. It is the only time available in its schedule and we said we would facilitate it by meeting briefly that morning.
The next item is a hand written letter from a County Waterford gentleman who has already been in correspondence with the committee regarding his tax affairs and dealings on them by the Office of the Ombudsman with the Revenue Commissioners. We wrote to the Revenue Commissioners for a response which we subsequently received and circulated. We have not yet received a response from the Office of the Ombudsman. I propose we write again to the Office of the Ombudsman for a response. When we receive it, we can consider the matter further.
