Ms Martina Mannion:

There were a number of themed issues running across the reports on the 2017 accounts that were received over the last period, as has been noted at the committee. The issues included the adequacy of the internal audit service, in respect of, for example, ICT and procurement. Those are examples where the centralised internal audit unit has the capacity, because the issues were common across the ETBs, to bring that sectoral learning to ensure that what is learned in one ETB is carried across for other ETBs. The terms of reference of the internal audit unit allow it to do specific audits of ETBs where specific issues have arisen. To date, one of the potential challenges has been capacity, as we have spoken about. At the moment, however, the audit committee with the five additional external auditors has nine members of staff between audit and support staff. Even when its recruitment process has finished, it will have nine. The challenges with capacity that were faced in the previous years will, hopefully, see an improvement following the recruitment process of the additional auditors. Notwithstanding parts of the issues and the reason that it had to seek external support was the challenging environment of securing auditors, the internal audit unit has identified the recruitment difficulties, including the length of time it has had to advertise without getting responses. The Department has given over €300,000 to the internal audit unit in support.