Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 24 January 2019

Public Accounts Committee

Special Report No. 103 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: Remuneration of certain senior staff in the University of Limerick and Institute of Technology Sligo

9:00 am

Photo of Seán FlemingSeán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to put one point to Mr. Ó Foghlú before I take the next opening statement. He is aware that the committee has discussed financial statements in the third level sector at length. He has been involved in those discussions on several occasions. We issued a report on 11 July 2017 regarding the unacceptable delay in receiving accounts from the various institutions. Yesterday, I looked up the most recent set of financial statements published in respect of the three organisations being dealt with today. The most recent set of published audited accounts for the University of Limerick are for the period 1 October 2015 to 30 September 2016, two and a half years ago. I have not seen any published financial statements for the university since then. In his opening remarks, the Secretary General referred to accountability and control. Those remarks ring hollow given that we do not have audited accounts for the past two and a half years. The most recent published financial statements for IT Sligo and Waterford Institute of Technology cover the period 1 September 2015 to 31 August 2016. That is two and a half years ago and we have not received any published financial statements for them since then. We will proceed with the meeting but I cannot emphasise strongly enough to Mr. Ó Foghlú that the Committee of Public Accounts finds it utterly unacceptable for the Department to come before us and talk about control, monitoring and review while the financial statements covering the past two and a half years have not been laid before the Oireachtas. Does Mr. Ó Foghlú have the audited financial statements for the University of Limerick or IT Sligo signed off by the Comptroller and Auditor General and the relevant Accounting Officer or president of the institution?

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