Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My question relates directly to last week's meeting dealing with the 2011 accounts for the Commission for Aviation Regulation, Commission for Communications Regulation and Commission for Energy Regulation. While we discussed those accounts during that meeting it was only following the meeting that I got a proper look at the accounts, which were for the year ended 30 June 2011 and as such were a year and a half old at that stage. I then looked at the commissions' websites and noted that those accounts had been posted on 13 January, which was a few days prior to that meeting. The 2011 accounts were audited and signed off by Mr. John Buckley on 21 December 2011. Perhaps the Comptroller and Auditor and General will tell us if the 2012 accounts have been signed off.

It would have been far more beneficial for the committee to have had the most recent annual accounts as the topic on the agenda for our meeting on 17 January. However, there was so much going on we did not get into that. During a meeting last summer with another organisation - I think it was the NTMA - it transpired that we were dealing with accounts which were a year and a half old. Within hours of that meeting finishing the organisation's accounts for the following year were published. While they had been fully available within the system they had not been published. It is important organisations are asked about the status of their most recent accounts prior to appearing before the committee. We were way behind the clock last week in terms of the accounts with which we were dealing. Have the commissions' annual accounts for the year ending 30 June 2012 been signed off?