The government proposed today that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) should formally start to discuss the findings of an Auditor-General report on Enemalta oil procurement in the week starting August 26.

Other PAC meetings would be held earlier in the month to agree on procedure and who the committee would summon.

The proposal was made by the Leader of the House, Louis Grech.

He said a meeting to discuss the procedure should be held next Tuesday and another meeting might be necessary for the committee to agree on the summoning of witnesses.

Mario de Marco, deputy leader of the opposition, agreed that preparatory meetings would be needed but said that it should then be left to the members of the PAC to agree when the formal hearings would start. He had no objection if August 26 was established as an indicative date but the PAC members should be free to start the formal hearings earlier, if they agreed.

The two sides agreed. The first preparatory meeting will be held on Tuesday.

MEMBERS TO BE SUBSTITUTED

Dr de Marco also noted that the prime minister had suggested that former minister Tonio Fenech (chairman of the PAC) and current minister Konrad Mizzi should not be members of the committee since they could be summoned as witnesses.

The Opposition, he said, had no difficulty in having these two MPs substituted as committee members.

The committee agreed.