John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If members bear with me, I have a few questions. I do not know whether this is a speech because we have heard speeches, confessions and questions and it is Christmas time. We are moving at a reasonable speed in dealing with the issues involved.

To touch on what was stated about frying Secretaries General or Accounting Officers when they attend the committee, as chief fryer and someone with a reputation, I welcome the approach the Secretary General has taken in putting out the full facts, both in respect of what happened in Uganda and the first report and on the need within the Department for a qualified accountant or chief financial officer. In general, were Accounting Officers to approach the work in this way, to deal with problems and not continually blame the system but to improve it, we might have an even better exchange and system by the end of the process. Moreover, people within the system might not be fearful, as some are, of coming forward and explaining just where things or people do not work. Ultimately, everyone around this table or anywhere else makes mistakes. Be it in politics or business, humanity can be messy at times and one must deal with this. Consequently, I welcome the frankness of the Secretary General's exchange.

In addition, I wish to take up Deputy Deasy's remarks on recent press comments. I agree with him and note that a trip to Africa certainly can change one's mind about matters. It was my first time to visit Africa in this way and to look at the situation in Mozambique as we did, with some other members of the committee. Briefly, to separate what we saw with regard to health and agricultural issues, the development of the economy, the clearing of landmines, the provision of the most basic water pump and how that was celebrated within a local community it had to be seen to be believed. It has an impact and leaves a mark or a person with a clearer understanding of what is going on in such countries. I will cite Ruairí de Burca, the ambassador to Mozambique, who noted that if it was perfect, we would not be in the country. That comment stuck in my mind as we went through the different projects and saw their impact. One can relate them to what happens in Ireland and how we stand. For instance, we met a woman who was obliged to walk 27 km to look after her pregnancy and the birth of her child. Similarly, there were schoolchildren who were obliged to walk 7 km to get water and the installation of a pump meant they could now go to school. These are things we take for granted and one does not actually understand their full impact until one meets such people face to face on the ground.

I will repeat a point I made to the staff of the embassy there - the volunteers we met were simply astonishing. I refer to local people who volunteer to attend in the homes of people with AIDS and so on and to provide home care. While I acknowledge this also takes place here, given the other challenges in people's lives there, it is astonishing to think they can park these challenges and take up a different set of challenges. Moreover, by delivering and helping with the investment we are making in their country, they add real human value to what we are achieving. I was also struck by the professionalism of the embassy staff, their approach to audits and desire to achieve the best with the money they were getting. I do not question any of this and I am sure I speak on behalf of all the delegation who travelled there when I express our thanks to the ambassador, Mr. de Burca, and his staff for the businesslike agenda they put together for us. Members of the committee question the use of taxpayers' money and I was conscious of the use of taxpayers' money to enable us to travel there. I consider it to have been money well spent because we were scrutinising the spending of €37 million of taxpayers' money in the context of Ireland's aid to that country. As members have been asked how much it cost and where they stayed, I have asked the clerk to the committee to put on our website precisely how much it cost, where we stayed and what we did while in the country. The public has the right to know this information and it should be our first task to do this as a committee.

While commending all of this, there is an issue in respect of accountability. It has nothing to do with the package delivered on the ground but pertains to the capacity of people within 128 districts in Mozambique and the capacity of those in government in the equivalent of the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General to do the work. Frankly, this capacity is not present in Mozambique and I can only speak from our experience in the country. On one side, one has young children signing for the pencils they will use to do their homework to account for them, while on the other, the capacity is not present, in human terms, to provide for the necessary accountability for overall expenditure within these districts. Moreover, such a capacity is certainly not present within the court of auditors in that country, the president of which we met, and something must be done in this regard. I cannot and will not stand over the movement of €37 million from Ireland to Mozambique in the context of the level of accountability for it at that most senior level. The president of the court of auditors states it audits 41% of the level of expenditure in the country and presented his accounts to parliament on 30 November, yet when I asked the question with a "Yes" or "No" answer as to whether one could account for the money Ireland gave to Mozambique, it remained unanswered. As Deputy Paschal Donohoe has noted, in such countries one cannot account for everything, which is the nature of the beast with which one is dealing. However, regardless of whether the president would not or could not answer the question, it remained unanswered. This is not satisfactory either from a public accounts point of view at our end or for the people who work for the Department at the other end because they are doing their best. The least one should expect from a government getting most of its revenue through foreign aid is that it be able to state that in Ireland's case, to the best of its knowledge, most of the money was spent and that capability levels within its governance structures were being improved. That was the key issue for me and something must be done about it.

What are we going to do about it? This question must be answered because arising from this hearing and following the committee's visit there will come a report that will be laid before the Dáil and the committee will be obliged to make recommendations. I want to be able to make a recommendation, as I am sure other members do, that will complement the work being done by the Department. While it has a list of achievements, this issue must be sorted out.

What is Mr. Cooney doing about the issue of giving strength on the ground and influencing the equivalent of the Comptroller and Auditor General's office to at least respond directly to a country that is giving €37 million in a way that will give us confidence to continue the aid programme? That has to be done at senior level. There is absolutely no question in my mind about that.

I have another question for Mr. Cooney. In Mozambique - I referred to this as the happiness table - out of total expenditure audited for 2009, 17% was qualified and 26% was counted as "other". I understand Mr. Cooney's point that we cannot get a 100% bill of health, although we can strive towards it, and we did have one in Vietnam. Surely there are signs for the departmental auditors to pick up and say: "Hang on. If there is a query there, the lads back home and those fellows on the Committee of Public Accounts will certainly raise concerns over that, so let's improve our methodology of accounting or audit". If this had been the case, we would have obtained incremental improvements from 2009. There were indicators that things were not all good in Mozambique and Uganda. Yet we did not seem to react as quickly as I would have expected, given the level of funding and its importance for such countries. I am not pointing at any one individual. However, can Mr. Cooney give me a sense of why the signs were not recognised, including the issue of capability in the districts and the auditor general's office?