Dáil Éireann

DÁIL ÉIREANN AN COISTE UM CHUNTAIS PHOIBLÍ COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTS Déardaoin, 17 Eanáir 2019 Thursday, 17 January 2019 The Committee met at 9 a.m. MEMBERS PRESENT: Deputy Bobby Aylward, Deputy Alan Kelly, Deputy Peter Burke, Deputy Marc MacSharry, Deputy Shane Cassells, Deputy Catherine Murphy, Deputy Catherine Connolly, Deputy Jonathan O’Brien. Deputy Alan Farrell, DEPUTY SEAN FLEMING IN THE CHAIR. 1 PAC Mr. Seamus McCarthy (An tArd Reachtaire Cuntas agus Ciste) called and examined. Business of Committee Chairman: We are joined by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr. Seamus McCarthy, who is a permanent witness to the committee. He is joined by Ms Maureen Mulligan, deputy director of audit. Apologies have been received from Deputies Cullinane and Deering. On behalf of the committee, the staff and myself as Chairman, I offer our sincere condolences to Deputy Cullinane on the passing of his mother in recent days. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis. The minutes of 13 December is the next item on the agenda. Are they agreed to? Agreed. We just have to make one typographical correction. The next item then is matters arising from the minutes. There is nothing specific that we will not come to in the course of our meeting. The next item is correspondence received since the last meeting. There is quite a bit because it has been a month since the last meeting. We will give this an hour or so and try to complete as much of it as we can. I do not want to hold too much over indefinitely. We go into our public session dealing with the Irish Prison Service some time after 10.30 a.m. The first item of correspondence in category A, briefing documents and opening statements, is Nos. 1835 A and 1845 A from the Department of Justice and Equality, dated 10 January 2019 and 16 January, and the briefing papers and opening statements for today’s meeting. We will note and publish those. Is that agreed? Agreed. The next category of correspondence is from category B, Accounting Officers or Ministers or both, as well as follow-up to Committee of Public Accounts meetings and other items for publication. The first item of correspondence is No. 1761 B from Ms Mary Lawlor, Communications and Public Affairs Manager, NAMA, dated 29 November 2018, providing further information requested by the committee in relation to Project Nantes and the question of the sale of assets. We raised the issue in respect of section 172 disclosures. I suggest we note and publish this letter from NAMA on the breakdown of the €24 billion in asset sales categorised by the jurisdiction of purchaser. In respect of the section 172 declaration, we are getting legal advice on that. We might take that in private session early next week. We will publish that documentation but we will have to come back and get legal advice from the Office of the Parliamentary Legal Advisor, as NAMA has sought its advice as to where we are with this issue. The next item is No. 1792 B from Mr. Phelim Quinn, CEO, Health Information and Qual- ity Authority, HIQA, dated 11 December 2018, enclosing a copy of HIQA’s workforce plan for 2018 as requested by the committee. It is good and positive to note that the Department has sanctioned 47 additional posts for the authority. We will note and publish that, including the workforce plan. It may already be in the public arena but we will publish it in any event. The next item is No. 1794 B from Ms Katherine Licken, Secretary General, Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, dated 11 December 2018, providing notes requested by the committee in relation to Galway as the European Capital of Culture in 2020, including the role played by the Department’s representative on the board as well as a note on monitoring reports and meetings. We will note and publish that. There are dates of meetings and reports. 2 17 JANUARY 2019 Deputy Catherine Connolly: I welcome confirmation that the nominee on the board is not employed by the Department, as I understand from that letter. Chairman: That is good. Deputy Catherine Connolly: The first planned monitoring meeting is to take place in the last week of January, which is very soon. I welcome that clarification. Chairman: That is helpful and I thank Deputy Connolly. The next item is No. 1795 B from the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, dated 11 December 2018, providing a briefing note on the national broadband plan and metropolitan area networks, MANS. We are going to have some of the private providers in that sector here at a special meeting. This document has quite a bit of information provided on the national broadband plan, the reasons given by companies which exited the tendering process and a briefing note on the metropolitan area networks. That includes specific reference to the maintenance of MANs con- tracts with Enet and the roll-over of that contract. I know Deputy Catherine Murphy will want to speak on this. I want to let people know to which document we are referring. There is also an update on the national broadband plan as to where we are with that at the moment. There are also some appendices attached showing the lists of various areas where the MANs network exists. Finally, appendix 2 gives statistics on the increased use of Eircode. I call Deputy Cath- erine Murphy. Deputy Catherine Murphy: A lot of the information given is useful. There are some specific pieces of information that we sought. One was the percentage of the investment by the Irish Infrastructure Fund that came from public funds. Is that separate? Chairman: There is a separate letter from it. We will come to it in correspondence. Deputy Catherine Murphy: The other issue is the coverage. Some areas in the country covered by metropolitan area networks, MANs, contain blackspots. We also looked for that. It is more to do with mobile phone coverage than it is to do necessarily with the MAN. However, it is one of the documents that was requested. We should specifically go back after that. Chairman: There are black spots in metropolitan areas where there is a MAN. Deputy Catherine Murphy: We were to receive information on black spots. The Depart- ment promised it before Christmas. It was on the existing state of the fibre and where there were black spots. Chairman: Is that in the fibre in the metropolitan area? Deputy Catherine Murphy: Yes. Chairman: Okay, we will ask specifically for that where there might be parts of the metropolitan area not covered by the metropolitan area plan where there are obvious gaps in it. For people who will read this document when we publish it, I want to highlight the reason Eir gave for withdrawing. That is in this document. The rationale for the State purchase of a €200 million stake in Enet is there. It continues to deal with the broadband plan. We will come back to that because it keeps referring to high-speed broadband. We have asked it to define what it means by that. It refers to download speeds of 30 Mbps and upload speeds of 6 Mbps. That is not high-speed broadband. High-speed broadband is the biggest misnomer of all time. That is not high-speed broadband by anybody’s definition in this century. If those figures are 3 PAC mentioned in any of the contract details, we are not getting what it says on the tin. Before we finish with that we need specific data. It has to be future-proofed. If those types of references are in the contract, it is a waste of space before we start. There should be no investment in broadband that is delivering 6 Mbps of upload speed. That is a waste of money in this day and age. If that is what the plan entails, we will need to discuss that in more detail. We will be talk- ing to a number of private operators here as set out in our work programme. We have quite a bit to come back to on that. For the moment, the letter contains interesting information and we are noting and publishing that. No. 1797 from the HSE provides information as requested by the committee on the national ambulance service. Deputy Lahart had requested information on this. I propose we publish this and forward a copy of this to the Deputy. Next is further correspondence from the HSE providing information on the development of national screening guidelines for hepatitis C; the reviews that have been undertaken in Portiun- cula Hospital and the Portlaoise maternity hospital; issues relating to miscarriage diagnosis; and an update on the changes being made in clinical assessment. We asked for this in the context of medical negligence issues. We also asked for a note on the project team established to examine local reviews. We asked for a note on the plan to enhance learning from incidents. I wish to make a few comments on aspects of concern. On page 4, the HSE confirms: “Doc- tors may require retraining as part of the outcome of a disciplinary hearing, investigation of an incident or following a legal settlement with or without admission of liability.” The idea that they may require training is not good enough if there is a major incident. It should be almost mandatory. We will come back to that. On the current practice of local reviews of an issue that arises in a particular hospital, at the bottom of page 5, it is stated: “At a local level, once a review has been completed, learning is expected to be shared across the service...”.

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