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

Of all the audits not certified by 31 October, the Comptroller and Auditor General said two thirds of them were with senior management. He indicated that in the first six months of the year he contracts some consultancy staff to help with the field work and contracts out some of the work to other companies. The bottleneck appears to be at senior manager review level. This begs the question whether the Comptroller and Auditor General has contracted people in or out at that level. He says he has contracted out work at field work level, but the area requiring greater concentration is that of the manager review, after the field work is done.

Following on what the Chairman has said, this discussion is pointless unless we raise this again at the Estimates meeting for the Vote for Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, which will arise as part of the Estimates discussion for 2015. Most people would assume this Vote comes under the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, but it does not. It comes under the Department of Finance. The reason for that is that it concerns an audit of expenditure. Therefore, it would not be right that a Minister responsible for public expenditure would be responsible for allocating the Estimate to the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General for the year.

We should make a point of raising this issue when the group of Estimates for the Department of Finance, which includes the Vote for the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, arises. I suspect the Minister for Finance would like the issue to be dealt with. Unless the Oireachtas takes some action, we are just talking away here and blowing smoke. There is an opportunity to raise this matter now and I give a commitment that I will be at the meeting when the Estimate debate takes place.