Mr. Pat McLoughlin:

When I was a member of an bord snip nua, as it was known, and the local government efficiency review, it was clear that the difficulties experienced by the State at the time impacted on local government because of the extent to which the latter was dependent on State funding and the fact that local government did not have a sustainable model of funding in its own right. Internationally, local government is much more independent of central government finances.

On the Comptroller and Auditor General and local government audit service, I was appointed to chair a group established to determine whether the two services could be merged. During our deliberations, which were by no means easy, the Government took a decision to establish the National Oversight and Audit Commission. From recollection, the reason for not merging the different services was that local government receives approximately 75% of its income locally and must, therefore, be accountable locally. Why should the national audit service - the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General - interfere in that particular area? This is a policy issue. Nevertheless, we established that the services could work together in a number of areas, including quality standards.

The reason we have no expertise on the funding model is because it is not an issue for us. Should we have more powers? Other than in matters of examining and reporting, I am not sure that the PSA necessarily has any more power than we do. It may have greater ability to call people in as witnesses, perhaps. Within NOAC, however, we have now decided to bring in each local authority, as much so that we can get an understanding of the individual context as anything else. Each local authority deals with quite different issues so there can be very different reasons efficiency can vary.

We work very closely with the Local Government Audit Service, LGAS, and have, for example, agreed on the range of issues we will look at from the point of view of value for money. LGAS has some expertise in value for money as part of its audit service. We have now agreed on a programme of work - what we in NOAC will do and what the LGAS will do - and we will do so every year. I also regularly meet the director of the audit service and she has come before NOAC to agree on these issues. We have not discussed what other powers we should have because this is a policy matter for Government.

With regard to councillors' knowledge, all I can say is that I am being increasingly asked to meet audit committees and so forth. We will certainly do anything we can to bring the attention of councillors to the work that we do and I will raise the possibility of providing greater information at the next NOAC board meeting. When we issue our reports, for example, there is no reason why we could not email copies to councillors if they were happy to receive them. There is no issue there.