PAC to write to CMETB and Department of Education

Thomas Lyons

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is to write to Cavan Monaghan Education and Training Board (CMETB) and the Department of Education and Skills seeking further information on lease agreements the education body entered into in 2009.

Local Sinn Féin councillor Eugene Greenan called on the leases to be “reviewed and investigated” by the public spending watchdog.
Last week vice chairman of the PAC, Alan Kelly (Lab), raised the matter at the Business of the Committee which takes place at the start of its public meeting. He referred to a correspondence from “a councillor in Cavan County Council regarding the arrangements for an office lease for Cavan Vocational Education Committee, VEC”.
Mr Kelly said: “I propose to write to the Department of Education and Skills to request a response in the first instance.”
However the Comptroller and Auditor General, Seamus McCarthy, an ex officio member of the Standards in Public Office Commission, proposed an alternative means of addressing the issue: “Could I suggest that writing to the education and training board, ETB, would be a more direct approach?”
The committee agreed to both correspondents. Cllr Greenan's request centres on five office units in the town centre leased by the training board.
This group of offices could continue to cost the two counties education overseers €289,000 every year from 2009 to 2044. The annual rent being paid by CMETB for one unit averages at €57,800, while a local estate agent has a unit in the same area on the market with a guide price of €80,000.
The Sinn Fein councillor has called for the lease agreement - worth approximately €10m in total over the full term of the lease - on properties advertised for sale for €2.5m in 2014 to be “reviewed and investigated” by the PAC.