Mr. Robert Watt:

-----published in 2012 relate to expenditure in 2011 and previous years as there might be a number of issues that have accumulated which are reflected in the report. I should say overall because it is important, as Deputy Fleming mentioned, to note that our role is to manage spending within the profiles and to ensure that the budgets are properly set and that Departments stay with them. It is also to ensure value for money and effectiveness of spend right across the board.

The Comptroller and Auditor General's report, as is the case every year, addresses a number of issues which are brought to his attention or which officials in the office identify as a particular concern, or issues that are raised with members here and the Chairman for their review. In terms of each of the recommendations of the report, the Accounting Officers give a view as to whether they accept the recommendations.

In the vast majority of those cases, the recommendations are accepted and we come back with an official response. We set out how we are going to learn from the mistakes and inefficiencies that are identified. A key part of our job with the Accounting Officers in the Department is to ask what happened. We accept the recommendation and follow through on it in terms of learning from it and ensuring the mistakes are not made again.

I do not have a figure in my head. If one tried to add up all the issues in the report, or asked the quantum - maybe Mr. McCarthy has a figure - it would be very hard to do so given the nature of the exercise. There would be a discussion about a particular project that might not have delivered what was expected. There could be a debate on what expected benefit did not accrue as opposed to an obvious case where taxes have not been paid and are written off, or where there is obvious social welfare fraud in respect of which the money was being recouped. One might be able to identify a loss in respect of the latter. There are some areas where it is easy to tot up what the amount would be and other areas where it is more difficult. However, we reflect all the recommendations, comments and learnings from the report in our discussions with the Accounting Officer in each Department. We have issued a new public service value-for-money code that reflects what the Comptroller and Auditor General has been saying over a number of years with a view to trying to learn from mistakes. I hope that this will eliminate some of the problems we have had.

No matter how efficient the system is or how effective we or the Accounting Officers of the Departments are, the Comptroller and Auditor General will have the opportunity every year to prepare a report that highlights areas of poor practice and bad practice and areas where we need to improve. We will never get to a situation where we can make the Comptroller and Auditor General or Committee of Public Accounts redundant or not have a Department like this; there will always be issues given the scale and complexity of the system and the nature of the services that we are delivering.