Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The European Court of Auditors is responsible for auditing all member states of the European Union. As Mr. Cardiff stated, we are moving towards the 2014-20 programme and a question arises about the financial commitments for previous years in respect of which funding remains unspent and which will likely lead to additional mistakes. If it is anticipated that there will be mistakes as a result of this mechanism, what alternative is proposed to deal with the huge sums of money that remain unspent? Given the regional nature of the system in place in some of the countries concerned, for example, Spain, France and Italy, is monitoring of these countries more complicated? Are such countries, as opposed to countries like Ireland in which the system is more centralised, more prone to making mistakes?