Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses to the meeting. I am sure the Irish Presidency of the EU will be a busy time for them and I wish them all the best for that.

Deputy Deasy makes an interesting point. We all value the health service but we still bring the HSE in here and question it to the nth degree in the interests of improving the health service. That is the purpose behind this exchange. There is no question in the bulk of citizens' minds about the value of the work being done by Irish Aid projects. The question in the mind of every taxpayer, rightly or wrongly, after the Uganda episode, is how does he know the euro he is giving to overseas development projects is getting to the vulnerable people Deputy Deasy mentioned. Sadly, in Uganda, €4 million did not get to those it was meant to get to and did not help those it was meant to help. It is important to mention that.

I have read the interim report on the Ugandan situation. There are obviously issues with the Ugandan structures, as the report acknowledges, and there are obviously systemic problems, as Mr. Cooney and Mr. Rogers pointed out. That is also taken as a given. We cannot, however, escape the fact there are at least three references in this report to key failings by the embassy. I have read and re-read the report and two things stick out in mind. The sixth recommendation refers to within the Irish Aid system, which is acknowledgment the systems are in place but there was a failure at our end to comply with certain controls and that failure to comply lessened likelihood of earlier detection. The recommendation mentions a particular failure to ensure adequate financial data were set out, as per the memorandum of understanding. That is not a criticism of the structures or Uganda; it is a criticism of the Irish embassy.

Page 14 refers to skills and capacity within Irish Aid and to a potentially problematic HR situation, where the internal auditor was on maternity leave, there was not sufficient face-to-face hand-over, the replacement auditor was engaged on a part-time basis, and that person did not have a sufficiently detailed knowledge of the complexities of the programme. There was also the issue of receipts not being on file.

Those are three concrete examples of failure on behalf of our embassy. I do not use the word "failure" lightly and I am not looking for heads to roll for the sake of it but we must get to the bottom of this. It is particularly important on the basis of Mr. Carlos's remarks, from which I took some comfort, that what happened in Uganda was at extreme variance with normal processes in other places. If that is factored in, it leads me to believe that other embassies are following controls and obeying the Irish Aid structures. If that is the case should the staff in the Irish embassy in Uganda put their hands up and accept some responsibility for what happened?