PAC chairman suggests civil servants are leaking information

The Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee has suggested that civil servants may be leaking information to the media.

John McGuinness's claims comes after the spending watchdog revealed yesterday that more than €250,000 was spent on refurbishing Deputy McGuinness's office when he was a Junior Minister.

The meeting also heard that at the time, officials requested that only degradable toilet paper be used in his office, such as Kittensoft, Inversoft or Andrex.

The spending details was obtained under a freedom of information request - but Mr McGuinness has also suggested that some civil servants may be leaking information to the media.

"I think that we have a situation in Irish society now where a huge amount of information is available to various government departments by way of PPS numbers and the activity of people within the state," he said.

"What we're talking about here is the deliberate access of information and allowing it to be leaked into the public domain which shows that there is a significant amount of information within government systems on individuals within the state."