Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I will do my best. Can I try and capture something that is of concern to me in relation to a number of different things that come together.

At the beginning of the meeting we talked about the transfer of properties under the redress scheme and the witness said that following the Comptroller and Auditor General's report progress was accelerated. We then had the universities in and we did a special report, late last year and earlier this year, and we will be returning to that. We did that because, just like the ETB sector, we were seeing that they were outliers.

Today we have the ETBs in because there is a significant lag in time in presenting accounts and having accounts audited to the point that it is very difficult for us to do the job that we are asked to do on the Committee of Public Accounts because the information is so out of date. There seems to be a very relaxed approach in the Department, in regards to the fact that all of these are the one Department. I have got to say that for me is incredibly concerning.

When we look at the ETBs for example, and the witness has given us a lot of reasons, and I completely understand that there are amalgamations and changes, and when one is trying to amalgamate different financial management systems that poses problems in addition to the backdrop of human resources and all of the rest of it. However, some of these ETBs were not amalgamated. There was continuity. One cannot say that all of the issues are down to amalgamations, but the same profile is there. What kind of sanctions are imposed in the Department for not conforming with the production of accounts in a timely way? What kind of financial controls are in place in the Department if it cannot be anticipated what might be overruns, what might be the requirements by virtue of the fact that the Department is not getting the accounts in a timely way?