Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That concludes correspondence to the committee. We will now deal with statements and accounts received since the last meeting. There are five statements and accounts for review, as listed on members' screens. The first is the Public Trustee Account which administers 148 trusts related to activities of the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine, including former Land Commission Trust balances. The trustee account balances and there is only a small turnover. The trust has received a clear audit opinion.

Next is the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland which has been given a clear audit opinion.

The Health Information and Quality Authority has received a qualified audit opinion to the effect that its statement gives a true and fair view, except that the authority accounts for the costs of retirement benefits entitlements only when they become payable, rather than when they are earned. All health bodies in the State have received a direction from the Minister for Health to do it this way, which is out of sync with international accounting standards. Historically, the Minister does not want these costs showing up as an annual cost; therefore, they are buried until people retire in 20, 30 or 40 years. This is not in order with international accounting standards, but all Ministers have done it, not just the Minister. It was a regular feature of past practice. We will note that the Health Information and Quality Authority is not accounting for pensions, as is usually the case for other organisations.

Next is the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, which is given a clear audit opinion. However, attention is drawn to the payment by the agency of €1.9 million to the Revenue Commissioners in November 2018 in respect of an underpayment of VAT on certain services received from abroad. The payment included €600,000 in interest and penalties. The amount of VAT involved was €1.3 million, with the interest and penalties of €600,000 bringing the total owed to €1.9 million. It is noted that there was a lapse in internal control in 2017 which resulted in non-compliant procurement in respect of four services contracts not being notified to NAMA's audit committee or other auditors and not being disclosed in its financial statements. The related non-compliant expenditure total was €4.35 million in 2017 and 2018. Will Mr. McCarthy comment on the VAT issue, whether it was a genuine error and so on?