Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is too vague for me. As Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, I believe the situation is not adequately in hand. I am looking to Mr. Deane and to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to address this. There has been a loss to the taxpayer. Not only was there a loss but Mr. Deane is actually telling us there is no great system even to learn from that loss. The lessons have not been learned across the public sector as a result of the loss of €700,000 in DIT. Mr. Deane says this is related to Government accounting procedures and not a matter of procurement but I am at a loss to know who needs to learn lessons from this. Mr. McCarthy is telling us there is €11 million concerning the Garda Síochána. I hope that never creates a problem. I am sure, now that we have raised the issue, we will be coming back to the Comptroller and Auditor General to find out its extent across all Government bodies. Between the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Office of Government Procurement, somebody needs to get a handle on the matter to ensure we are not here next year finding €3 million had been issued in prepayments to a contractor that went bust. I need to see lessons learned across the public service from what happened in DIT. One function of the Committee of Public Accounts is to make sure the public sector learns from what went wrong. Mr. Deane gets the gist of what I am saying. I have made my point and he knows where I am coming from. It is not personal. I am a little surprised the system has not adequately registered the risk, which was actually realised in some places.

I thank the witnesses from An Garda Síochána, the Department of Justice and Equality and the Office of Government Procurement for attending, for the materials supplied, and for offering to forward information on any outstanding matters referred to today.

We have completed our public meeting. We will be meeting in public session on Thursday, 14 June, when we will be meeting representatives of the State Claims Agency and the HSE. That will be followed by a meeting with Nursing Homes Ireland, subject to confirmation, and the National Treatment Purchase Fund. We shall now go into private session to do the committee's private work. I thank the witnesses very much for attending.