Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Department has said it is working on it, so we will follow up on that. I thank the members. We are getting there. Next are the recommendations in respect of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. There were several recommendations in respect of the Galway art house cinema. The Department has accepted all of them, that is, recommendations B23, B24 and B25, and stated that it has learned many lessons. It is a historic issue at this stage but lessons have been learned from that. The Department has also accepted that it should have had more oversight and that is the system it is planning to use for future projects.

The recommendations we made to Department of Finance are next. The committee recommended that the Department prioritise the production of a consolidated central government financial statement. That has been accepted and the Department is working on it with the help of the OECD. Recommendation B29 was to bring forward proposals to improve co-ordination in Government accounting, including the various State bodies. That has been accepted and is also part of the review being undertaken with the OECD.

We recommended also that the Minister for Finance should endeavour to make sure progress was made in respect of the use of gross national income (Star), GNI*, for measuring activity in national income. The Department accepted that measurement is very clear but stated that it is not a European rule. The official reply stated several times that there is no legal status for GNI* as it is purely a domestic measure and it is not defined in the European system of accounts. We understand that. The Department stated that the consent of all of the other European Union countries would be needed to change the European system of accounts. It added, however, that the European Commission, while it uses the normal GNI and not the Irish GNI*, does take the GNI* measurement into account when dealing with Ireland. GNI* does not, however, have legal standing and to change that would require a European Union change. It has accepted that the point was well made at this committee. GNI* is only a domestic figure and not an internationally accepted figure but the European Commission does take it into account.