Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will come back to it next week. I am told we have a letter on the issue, which will be dealt with at next week's meeting. If we are not satisfied with that we will take it up further next week. On the letter regarding open disclosure, we are coming back to the issue of medical negligence because we have not yet completed our work in that regard. We will hold this correspondence as part of our ongoing work on that issue. There is interesting information in this documentation regarding the processing of claims. We will note and publish this correspondence but it will form part of our future work.

Correspondence 1769B isfrom Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú, Secretary General, Department of Education and Skills providing information on the potential risk caused by the weaknesses in the accounting system following the transfer of the training centre accounting system from FÁS and the internal audit function for each of the education and training boards. We will note and publish this correspondence, which makes for detailed reading in regard to the ETBs. According to the correspondence, which I read yesterday, the ETBs were established in 2013 and they hope to commence phased implementation of the payroll shared service next year and to commence phased implementation of the financial shared services system in 2020. Seven years after these organisations were established they are only centralising these services. They accept that the number of people in the internal audit function, which is based in Cavan, is not sufficient and they had recruited a number of additional staff but three of them left because the amount of time spent travelling from Cavan to Waterford, Wexford and Cork and so on did not suit them. They now have a minimal staff complement, with three staff on contract from a consultancy company. They accept that they did not have adequate internal audit facilities available in 2017. It is a factual letter, setting out the position warts and all, acknowledging failures and the difficulties involved in terms of making improvements. They also acknowledge how long it has taken to get to this point since the establishment of the ETBs in 2013, which is a lesson we are learning for all new public bodies. There was a similar issue with the establishment of the Tax Appeals Commission. When a body is being established nobody comprehends there will be an increase in workload. This is a previous example that also is coming back to haunt us.

The ETBs have appeared before us previously. They have moved from only one having its accounts for audit within three months of the year-end to all now being on time. We met four of them recently, when we highlighted this issue extensively. The ETB network in Ireland has acknowledged the work of the Committee of Public Accounts in putting pressure on the Department of Education and Skills to provide additional resources and so on. We have achieved a lot in this sector.

Would Mr. McCarthy like to comment?