John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I ask members to note all of these statements and accounts.

We will move on to No. 5, which is our work programme. It is now on the screen. Next week, representatives from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform will come before us. I will ask the clerk if it would be possible to give us a list of the various breaches of procurement by the different universities, institutes of technology or the HSE or whatever it might be, so that members will have a list before them for next week. Also relevant will be any other matters pertaining to the works of that Department relative to other agencies and Departments in respect of which we can raise issues of procurement guidelines and so on. Does anyone wish to raise an issue on the work programme? No.

I will also ask the clerk to circulate the OECD report which was published yesterday and presented to the Ceann Comhairle. The report concerns pre-budget arrangements, scrutiny and so on by various committees. It is a reasonable starting point for reform that might be taken up by the next Administration. I expressed disappointment that there is not sufficient commentary in the report on the workings of the Committee of Public Accounts and the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General. That office was mentioned in respect of informing other committees on budgetary strategies. The one single reforming step that could be taken if an Administration were serious about controlling issues such as procurement overspend and inefficiencies within the State, would be to increase the level of resources available to the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Committee of Public Accounts. They should be made effective right across Government Departments and agencies from the point where money is allocated to that when it is spent. Funding and resources should be provided to cover forensic examination of different accounts where that is deemed to be warranted. There should also be an amalgamation of local government and the Comptroller and Auditor General's office. I made those points yesterday at the briefing session.

The sooner the Houses of the Oireachtas begin to examine that part of the balance, the better it will be for the taxpayer. I think it is urgent and every single political party in the forthcoming election should be making an issue of this part of the administration of the State in terms of public sector reform. We might have seen glimpses of reform but we have not seen what I would consider to be real reform, which would affect the quality of monitoring and control of the spend of taxpayers' money. The first step should be to amalgamate those two offices and centralise power with the Comptroller and Auditor General. The resources should then be given to that office. That would go a long way towards starting reform. What gets counted gets done. That is the way they should do it. I welcome the report although I was disappointed with that aspect of it. I ask that it be circulated to members and that we make our views known to the Ceann Comhairle.

Our agenda for next week is the appropriation accounts of the Office of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform: superannuation; retired allowances; shared services; the Office of Government Procurement; Vote accounting and budget management; management of Government grants; payroll accrual for national accounts; and the national lottery fund.