Mr. David Cooney:

They also encourage staff to go for additional qualifications, which will be funded but requires staff to sign a declaration that they will stay. Work is underhand. I should have said "on hand" but, unfortunately, there is underhand work as we have already identified. This is work that is on hand. These are countries in development. We have an issue in our system and we need to strengthen our skills sets and financial management. There is no doubt the public service embargo, which is there for understandable reasons, has hit us in that we have shortcomings. Every Department has a framework of staff numbers and we have had to reduce staff numbers. Development co-operation and the rest of the Department are all part of the pool.

Unfortunately when managing the sort of money we are managing in the development programme, I am concerned we are not able to fill all the vacancies we need to fill. The problem is that we cannot deal with that by cannibalising the rest of the Department. Until now, everyone has taken some of the pain. Development co-operation, in my view, is better resourced than the rest of the Department. It must be, if it is managing this amount of money.

I spoke to the committee earlier to outline how I am seeking sanction to recruit a chief financial officer. Frankly, every spending Department should have a chief financial officer at assistant secretary level. I am the Accounting Officer but I have no formal training in accountancy or financial management. There should be assistance from a chief financial officer at assistant secretary level who is capable not just of ensuring that the bills are paid but of policing the operation of our financial systems across the Department, and who has the stature and seniority to challenge the other heads of divisions on their management. That is not the practice in the Civil Service but even a chief financial officer professionally qualified at principal officer equivalent level would be of great assistance to me.

Similarly, we have gaps in the development co-operation structure in Irish Aid where we need to get in properly qualified people. In some cases, however, we come up against the embargo while in other areas we come up against salary caps. The fraud in Uganda has forced us to face up to this issue and we must deal with it, even if it requires spending money from the aid budget to recruit the people we need to ensure the money we spend on development is properly administered. The embargo is there for reasons we all understand, and I do not challenge that, but in this situation we must use the money we are spending to make sure the money we spend on development is being properly spent.