Mr. Hubert Loftus:

A central internal audit unit service was established and is operating for 15 of the 16 ETBs, with the Dublin city board separate. When the internal auditor for City of Dublin ETB retired, we used the opportunity to bring all 16 ETBs together under one internal audit arrangement.

We are not just replacing but strengthening the internal audit team and there has been an interview process for that purpose, which took place yesterday. It can be difficult to get vacancies filled within the Dublin region because of accommodation costs so, wherever there are gaps, we will look at an outsourced service to ensure the audit provision can be dealt with and managed.

The chair of the City of Dublin ETB raised the quorum issue. A quorum is 12 out of 21, that is, a 50% quorum such as operates traditionally within the other national bodies in the education sector. If we reduced it, it would be a bit out of line. We tried to ensure a proactive approach to this issue so the Department carried out a survey of ETBs and wrote to all the personnel involved in nominating people to boards and to the ETBs themselves. This has made some progress in helping to avoid quorum issues but we remain vigilant about them and we will be doing another survey later this year.