A letter has been received from the Department of Finance providing information on issues raised at the last meeting of the select committee. The letter was circulated this morning and relates to the Maynooth College chapel and the Office of Public Works Vote, token Supplementary Estimate, which was dealt with at the last meeting. I invite brief comments.
Business of Select Committee.
Deputy Paul McGrath has had to go to another meeting. The issue has not been clarified. It is not clear from this letter whether there was an original application submitted by the college for the grant aid for the college chapel, on the basis of which a decision was made to make this grant. Could we have confirmation from the Department of Finance that there was such an original application that preceded the decision to provide the grant, and that it was not another word of mouth arrangement, without any proper procedure? It is important that where the Department of Finance is giving out money or approving funds, it should be on the basis of an application that officials have seen and on which they have made recommendations to the Minister, though of course the Minister takes an independent decision. It is important that we get assurances that a proper application procedure preceded the decision and that the decision was reached in accordance with due process.
I wish the project at Maynooth College all the best. Asking these questions in no way implies opposition to the proposal. The issue before us, as presented on the last occasion the Minister of State attended, is whether the proper procedures applied at each step along the way. The letter received by the committee, dated 23 June 2003, does not answer the queries of committee members raised at our last meeting, when this matter was first addressed.
The appropriate paragraph reads: "Although the title of subhead C(2) is Grant-in-aid to Maynooth College Library, this office can confirm that no work has been carried out on the library, nor is any planned at present. In recent years, work has been concentrated on the chapel." If that is the factual position, it is not in dispute. What we want to know is for what purpose the moneys were sought? Was there an initial application, or as Deputy Bruton has asked, was this a word of mouth arrangement between the Maynooth College authorities and their local Deputy and Minister? That is the evidence we requested at our last meeting, evidence which the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, agreed to furnish. Neither the commitment he gave nor the objective of the committee members has been met by the furnishing of this letter from the Office of Public Works. I ask, as we did at the last committee meeting, to see the file on the initial application, its detail, if it was proposed from the outset, and that the original approval of the funding for Maynooth College clearly specified the chapel, and not by mistake the library, as the Minister of State advised us on the last occasion. I am sorry he has not met the simple request of the members by furnishing this correspondence. The matter needs to be addressed further.
I got the reply today, as did other members of the committee. It is not satisfactory in terms of the issues raised at the last committee meeting. A practice appears to have developed whereby members are given bewildering amounts of information shortly before the committee meets. Then Ministers and their aides come in, like today, and tell us what they want to say. Members have a limited capacity to ask serious questions and get serious responses. There is no point in discussing either the Maynooth library or the Maynooth chapel affair, whichever, and the decision by the Minister for Finance to give it a grant in the 2003 budget, until the committee gets the information and the answers to the questions that were asked on the discussion of the Estimates.
Is the Deputy proposing we adjourn this matter?
Yes. What is the point?
Is that agreed? The Deputy is proposing to adjourn the matter.
I do not think this should be just foreclosed. There have been a number of other proposals and there are a number of questions that need to be answered in respect of whether there was proper procedure and due process before the decision was made. I understand Deputy Burton is saying it does not seem the issue can be resolved now and the committee needs to get the relevant information before the next meeting. Members will then have a chance to ask those concerned to appear before the committee. At least they will have the information and can decide where to go from there.
It is incumbent on the Minister of State to honour the commitment he gave the committee on the last occasion he appeared before it. On that occasion he responded to members' questions by indicating he would furnish all the documentary evidence that would allay all the fears expressed. He has not fulfilled that undertaking.
I have spelt out the issue clearly on a previous occasion. It was a simple matter of a typographical error. The Minister for Finance has made grants available over many budgets for the refurbishment of churches. I mentioned Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin and a church in Waterford, the Irish college in Louvain and the Irish college in Paris where substantial grants were paid. In this case, as in many others, a request was made for a grant towards the Maynooth college chapel. Several Deputies indicated they had no problem. One Deputy who knows the chapel well strongly approved of the funding. I think it was Deputy Paul McGrath. The only mistake made - it is admitted in the letter that it was made at official level - resulted in the grant erroneously being recorded in the Revised Estimates volume 2003 as a grant to Maynooth college library instead of Maynooth college chapel.
Was there an application in writing that one can see on the basis of which the Minister for Finance was advised by the Office of Public Works to the effect that this project fell within its scheme and that a grant could be sanctioned accordingly? That is the issue, not whether the Minister or some official made a mistake. The committee wants to see if there was due process, an audit trail as regards this grant scheme. Can the Minister of State give us that assurance and produce the evidence?
Allied to that it is important the committee has confirmation that the original intent was for the chapel. It does not matter whether it is Maynooth or the college in Louvain or anywhere else, if public moneys are committed to specific works it is incumbent on the Department of Finance and the recipient to honour to the letter what they were committed to. They should not have the option to change their minds and switch the grant endowment to something else. That is the concern members have and they want assurances that this is not what happened. The committee simply wants to see the documentary evidence to assuage members' concerns.
As Chairman of the committee I want to rebut any suggestion, as has been made, that the officials may have made a change to switch the purpose of the grant from one project to another——
It was not the officials. The Chairman must listen as carefully as the Minister of State to what is being said.
We never suggested that. In fact the officials are offering to fall on their swords and say the "error" was entirely their responsibility. Members are asking, when the Minister for Finance announced the decision on Maynooth in the 2003 budget what was the background in awarding the welcome grant to the college authorities. They want to know where is the relevant documentation, grant application and correspondence. That was the question on the Supplementary Estimate and it remains the question. It is a valid question and we are entitled to an answer.
I want to clarify one point. The whole purpose of the token Supplementary Estimate vote was to correct the error to which the Deputy has referred. Had the Department of Finance issued the payment in respect of Maynooth college chapel without coming back to the committee to seek a Supplementary Estimate, members' criticisms would be valid in that regard. However, it was done with precision. The Department of Finance sought a token Supplementary Estimate to ensure everything was within the precise letter of the law, about which members are so concerned. This committee considered the transfer from one Vote head to the other Vote head and reported to the Dáil. The Dáil subsequently agreed that. It was not done by the Department of Finance. The committee and the House agreed to it.
What was put before the committee posed further questions. We have asked for clarification as regards the initiation of the project with the Department of Finance, how it came forward and in what format. In what format did approval issue and did it directly refer to the project that was undertaken by the college, that is the chapel and not the library, as referred to in subhead C2? The members are making a simple request. My concerns grow by the minute when I find such a resistance to the documentary evidence being provided.
I have put on the record that over €1 million had already been spent on the chapel. It was a grant to aid the completion of that work. The Department of Finance went into detail with the Office of Public Works in terms of the ingress of water that was causing a difficulty and so on. There was never any intention to spend money on the library. That is confirmed both in the documentation here and——
That is not the question.
There is a new question, obviously.
The committee is legitimately entitled to ask. The Minister for Finance has made a point of giving certain significant amounts of money - we all know horses got more money than the churches in the 2003 budget. Members want to know whether there was a grant application, a letter from the Maynooth college authorities. Did the Minister, having been generous to Santa's Kingdom in Punchestown, just decide to throw a few bob, unasked for, into the coffers of Maynooth as well?
I will undertake to get that information. I assume the Minister did what he would normally do, as he did in the last budget, when he announced the decentralisation plan. He did not have to consult or whatever. He announced it in the budget and it comes into effect as a result. This particular issue was announced in the budget last year. The mistake arose between the library and the chapel. That is the only difficulty. If the Deputies feel there is need for more information I will undertake to get it.
Members only received this on the eve of today's meeting. A number of weeks have elapsed and I would expect that both the Minister of State and the Minister for Finance would have been eager for the committee to confirm that it accepted everything was bona fide and above board and that some speed would have been employed in furnishing the information now re-requested.
I want to bring this topic to a conclusion. When the committee receives whatever additional information is available it will consider the matter at that stage. As regards the Supplementary Estimate, which is what members were discussing at the last meeting, the committee has completed this consideration. The Dáil has accepted the Supplementary Estimate and that topic is closed. We are now proceeding onto a slightly different issue and it is separate from the Supplementary Estimate. When we receive the relevant information on that issue, the Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service as opposed to the Select Committee on Finance and the Public Service will decide if it wants to deal with the matter at that stage. We will adjourn consideration of the matter until we see what further information emerges. We will conclude the matter. There is no further business appropriate to the select committee.
Was it part of a budget announcement?
It was.
Is not that at the discretion of the Minister for Finance and that no application or documentation is necessary in thatcase?
Absolutely. A grant application is not needed for a budget announcement.
Budgets are at the discretion of the Minister.
That is correct. They are ministerial and Cabinet decisions.
The select committee adjourned at 5.40 p.m.sine die.