Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On accounts submitted, I want to raise one other issue. This week, the Comptroller and Auditor General published his special report No. 99 on public sector financial reporting for 2015. I thank the Comptroller and Auditor General for his work. Briefly, there are 224 semi-State, health, education, and North-South agencies with a turnover of €43.7 billion. We are not talking about Government Departments here, rather we are talking about all the other agencies. Of these, 60% failed to produce their financial accounts for audit within the required three-month period. This is unacceptable and we have already indicated that the Committee of Public Accounts will not be prepared to tolerate this any longer. Primarily these organisations have received public funding and they have not produced financial statements to account for that.

The job of the Committee of Public Accounts is to hold these organisations to account, and we would not be doing our job. There is far too lax an approach right across Irish public life, where people are not being held to account. We will be coming back to this report but I am asking the Comptroller and Auditor General to assist us. Specifically, prior to our next meeting, I want him to give us the list of those organisations who have still not presented their 2015 accounts to him for audit. It is only a small number at this stage. We will write to them, to the chairperson specifically as well as perhaps the chief executive, demanding that they account for their failure, not for any-----