On May 23 this year, the Chairperson of the Committee of Public Accounts, John Brady the Sinn Féin TD for Wicklow, announced that the Committee would be conducting an investigation into payments for asylum accommodation through the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS).
That was supposed to begin in June, before the Summer recess, but there have been no hearings held to date.
In July, I contacted the Committee Secretariat requesting whether the Committee of Public Accounts had “taken any steps to establish an inquiry into asylum accommodation payments as was proposed in May by Deputy Brady?” and if any meetings had been held or were scheduled to be held.
I also asked the Committee if any submissions had been made. A number of people who had been or were currently involved in issues including legal cases had contacted me to find out if members of the public would be able to make submissions regarding the lack of information on contracts and other matters.. The Secretariat informed me that all members of the Committee would see my email but there was no response.
No hearings were held in June or since. Last Wednesday, September 17, the Committee met and agreed on its work programme for the remainder of 2025. There is no reference in the published minutes or in the work programme to any inquiry into, or any engagement with, IPAS.
Nor was IPAS mentioned in 17 sets of accounts that were submitted to the Committee and addressed by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Seamus McCarthy on July 17.
The Committee of Public Accounts met in public for the first time since the break last Thursday, September 18. One of the items dealt with were the accounts for Science Foundation Ireland. That was allocated a State grant of €376 million for 2025. Another to come under scrutiny was Bord Bia with a budgeted grant of €59.5 million for the year.
One of the Committee members, James Geoghegan, Fine Gael TD for Dublin Bay South, referred to “low lying fruit, which involves sums of money in the millions.” Geoghegan mentioned specifically a sum of €4.1 million related to a payment from the HSE to Children’s Health Ireland.
Of course, it is vital that our elected representatives ensure that the Sacred Calf of Prudence is properly venerated. However, most of what was before the Committee pales into insignificance when compared to the several billions that have been spent through IPAS, with the figure for this year likely to end up at €1.5 billion.
Rather than pursue that the Committee will continue to look at what are, let us face it, trivial sums – low hanging fruit – rather than plumb what to many of us seem the murky waters of a vastly funded asylum system in which more than 80% of applicants are found not to have a valid claim but who almost invariably stay here anyway.
Chairperson John Brady did indicate last week that the Committee will be grilling the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Integration over the coming months. Not on the IPAS payments and contracts, as promised by Deputy Brady in May, but on the sums voted for the Department budget for prisons and cybersecurity.
I again contacted the Committee of Public Accounts and Deputy Brady himself to ask if a date has been set for the investigation promised last June, and “if you could provide any indication as to whether the promised investigation will begin and if any preliminary research or hearings have so far been conducted.”
Deputy Brady did respond to say that he was “waiting on the 2024 accounts to be signed off” and that the Department was to appear before the Committee on October 23 regarding its 2024 appropriation.
I pointed out that he himself had said last week that this would be about Vote 21 and Vote 24 which are on prisons and cybersecurity and asked when the actual inquiry into the IPAS payments would begin. He did not get back to me on that.
So, as matters stand there would seem to be no plans for the Committee of Public Accounts to question the Department regarding the contracts and payments connected to the accommodation system now under the responsibility of the Minister for Justice. And certainly no indication yet that there will be the promised investigation that was scheduled to begin in June.
It remains up to people like ourselves and a small number of elected representatives with our limited resources to probe what Deputy Brady rightly described in his statement last May as a system that is facilitating “profiteering” in which “people have become millionaires for the provision of what is often poor quality and wholly unsuitable accommodation.”
All of this does need to be subject to full public enquiry and disclosure but it would seem that the political will to set that in train is absent.