You are all very welcome to today's meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts. Before we proceed, I have a few housekeeping matters to go through as follows.

Members are reminded of the provisions within Standing Order 226 that the committee shall refrain from inquiring into the merits of a policy or policies of the Government or a Minister of the Government, or the merits of the objectives of such policies. Members are also reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I also remind members of the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. Members of the committee attending remotely must do so from within the precincts of Leinster House.

The agenda for today is to discuss the minutes, accounts and statements, correspondence and upcoming meetings, and we will suspend our meeting and begin the engagement with officials from St. James's Hospital at 10.30 a.m. or thereabouts.

The minutes of the meeting of 15 January 2026 were agreed by the committee and will be published on the committee's website.

There are four sets of accounts and financial statements laid between 12 January and 16 January 2026 that are due to be considered today. We are joined by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr. Seamus McCarthy, who is a permanent witness to the committee. I ask the Comptroller and Auditor General to address these before opening the floor to members.

First, we have the accounts of the fishery harbour centres for 2024. Those received a clear audit opinion.

Second are the financial statements of Tourism Ireland, which is one of the seven North-South bodies, in relation to 2024. A clear audit opinion was issued in relation to the financial statements. However, I drew attention to a matter related to what was called the remuneration report, which is presented with the financial statements. Information about senior management remuneration and pension entitlements presented with the financial statements is not fully compliant with the reporting obligations on North-South bodies. The obligations are set jointly by the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation and the Northern Ireland Department of Finance and increase the obligation on the body to provide additional information from 2024 on. The information presented is not fully compliant with that, and it is my obligation to draw attention to that matter.

Third are the financial statements of South East Technological University relating to the accounting period 1 September 2023 to 31 August 2024. These received a clear audit opinion, but I did draw attention to the direct costs of €1.9 million that were incurred up to the reporting date in relation to a cyberattack experienced by the university in October 2024. I should say, that was €1.9 million up to the date of the signing of the accounts and their certification. The event actually happened after the period of account reported, but the costs had been substantial and were reported in the statement on internal control.

Finally, the financial statements of the Institute of Public Administration for 2024 received a clear audit opinion, but I should draw the committee's attention to the fact that the accounts were certified on 27 June and presented only on 16 January. The committee may wish to follow up and seek an explanation for the late submission.

I thank the C and AG. Can we invite Tourism Ireland to come before the PAC? A sum of €112 million is quite a substantial amount of money, and with the decrease in tourism in Ireland last year, I think it would be very appropriate if we invited Tourism Ireland to discuss what the C and AG has pointed out and reported on. That would be important.

Regarding the South East Technological University and the €1.9 million in relation to the cyberattack, it is a significant amount of money. Are there questions there about the university's preparedness for such attacks and what level of investment it had made in its IT systems and so on? That is a huge sum to deal with an attack. I suggest we should probe that a little further and seek clarity on it. The C and AG might have an opinion.

It is certainly open to the committee to inquire further into the matter. As I understand it, only the Waterford campus, not the other campuses, was affected. Perhaps the university's systems are not fully integrated, and that may have saved the other campuses. The committee might be minded to inquire further into that. From memory, I think MTU also had a difficulty, maybe in 2022. That ended up costing MTU, I think, over €4 million, so these events are very costly in terms of remediation, and sometimes even all the data that is lost may not be recovered. That is quite apart from the confidentiality around individuals' personal data that may be compromised. It is a very significant issue for public sector organisations to be aware of and to protect themselves against these kinds of attack.

I propose that we write to the university to seek further details on the issue for Deputy McGrath and then return to it.

Absolutely. In the context of the cyberattack and the expenditure that was necessary afterwards, it is really about how prepared the university was for such an attack. Maybe there are questions around potential underinvestment in cybersecurity and protection in that the university left itself open to this. I appreciate that every organisation is open to attack. When that amount of money has to be spent to deal with it, however, it behoves us to ask the question as to how prepared the university was for such an attack.

If that is agreed, we will try to follow up and get further information. Agreed. Do members agree to the report? Agreed. Can we agree to note that the listing of accounts and financial statements is agreed? Agreed.

No. R2025/0411 is correspondence from the Secretary General of the Department of Transport, dated 16 December 2025, in relation to the committee’s request for further information. Is it agreed to note and publish this item?

There are a couple of things that are still outstanding when we go through that. It is important to note that the NTA had not provided the information in time to the Department of Transport. That was said to us, I believe, in December. I think it is now appropriate, one month later, for the committee to write again and ask for the outstanding information. We do not want anyone to think that we have forgotten.

Is that agreed? Agreed.

No. R2026/0032 is correspondence from the chief executive officer of St. James’s Hospital, dated 19 December 2025, in response to the committee’s request for further information regarding the National Treatment Purchase Fund. Is it agreed to note and publish this item? Agreed.

No. R2026/0024 is correspondence from Inland Fisheries Ireland, dated 14 January 2026, in response to the committee’s request for further information. We had a broad discussion on this in light of the extensive correspondence that was furnished to the committee. We discussed it during our private session earlier. It was agreed to defer this item until next week while we are awaiting further clarity and information from the Department and other correspondents. It also has been agreed to seek to bring representatives from the Department and Inland Fisheries Ireland, IFI, before the committee at the earliest opportunity. We will be returning to this issue next week and agreeing a date for engagement with those witnesses.

I agree with the decision to defer this correspondence until next week and to agree a date for the representatives from IFI to come before the committee at that point. However, I just want to emphasise how important it is that they do come before the committee again. In the correspondence we issued, I had included a number of questions seeking clarity on a specific issue. I want to make sure that they come back before us and provide that clarity. It is vital.

In fairness, and Deputy Dolan was not here for the private session, all members spoke extensively on this. There is widespread anger and frustration and a desire to get the representatives from IFI back in as soon as possible in order to get the information we requested from the Secretary General of the Department seeking clarification and to express our concerns. We await a response.

I appreciate that.

Do members wish to discuss any other items of correspondence? No. Deputy Murphy had flagged an item to be dealt with in a private session.

No. R2026/0025 is correspondence from the Oireachtas broadcast workers, dated 15 January 2026, regarding a request by the staff in relation to the expert working group. We are a bit in the dark about this group. We wrote to the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission seeking clarification around the process and information on the terms of reference of the review group that was going to be established to look at why the tender was unsuccessful and at the future of the broadcasting services here in the Oireachtas. We await a response from the commission. The clerk informs me that the due date for that response is tomorrow.

Correspondence has been received by others. It goes into some of the scope for that expert group's work and lays out three areas it is going to look at, namely the structure of the unsuccessful order for tender last autumn, the staffing and technical service delivery model in the parliamentary broadcaster and the future development of the Oireachtas broadcasting unit within the broader broadcasting-streaming environment. It also states that there is a consultation process open as part of the work of the expert group. It further states that the deadline for submissions in respect of that work is 5 p.m. on 23 January next. That is news to me. I am sure it is news to members who expressed concerns about this matter and about the treatment of the broadcast workers to hear that there is a deadline for submissions. We should seek that the deadline be extended.

I am not sure we have not had a discussion around this. Following our extensive hearings on this matter, there may potentially be a desire among members to make in a submission as part of the process. It is not helpful that we are only being informed now that the deadline is tomorrow. Do members agree that we should seek to have the deadline extended? We will return to this issue next week and get the views of members as to whether they agree or whether there is a desire to make a submission in respect of the evidence we have heard as part of our engagements. Is that agreed? Agreed.

With regard to the work programme, the committee will meet with representatives from the Corporate Enforcement Authority on 29 January next.

The final item is any other business. Are there any other matters that members wish to raise? Deputy Boland had raised issues under any other business during the private session. Does she wish to speak to those?

Following on from our meeting with its representatives last week, it is important that we follow up with the National Transport Authority, NTA. They had committed to giving us periodic reports on the next generation ticketing project and train control centre projects. I propose that we write to the NTA now to ask them to provide us with quarterly updates on both of those projects.

On the €40 million overrun, it was not clear last week where the Government really stood, what went wrong. and whether lessons had been learnt. We should request a copy of the board minutes of the NTA and Irish Rail in relation to the train control centre since the project was incepted. We should also request a copy of the annual comprehensive letter from the chair of CIÉ and Irish Rail to the Minister for Transport in relation to the train control centre.

That was agreed earlier, so we will do that. Unless there are any other items that members wish to raise-----

We agreed in private session, so it is worth noting in public session, that in relation to the national children's hospital, we intend to seek a full update on the status of the project. It has been some time since we dealt with the matter. There has been certain media commentary on further slippage of timelines and so on. We are to seek an update on that and we will revisit the issue.

Yes. That was agreed in the private session. I thank Deputy McGrath for that. To state the obvious, there are serious levels of concern and frustration on this, not just within the committee but more broadly, including those who were expecting and hoping to have their children in the hospital. There is concern with the slipping timelines. It is agreed that we will try to get an up-to-date position on that with a view to returning to this issue. Members have a keen interest in it, and I imagine we will be seeking to have a hearing on it with the witnesses we had before us previously.

That concludes our second session. We will suspend for five minutes.