Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Accounting Officer. I welcome him and his team. As attested by the opening statement, the Department has a huge scope, with many areas that could be examined. I will keep my focus tight this morning. Primarily, I wish to focus on the fact that the Department of Children and Youth Affairs advances a huge amount of money to an organisation called Pobal to administer its early years childcare programme; some €500 million in fact. Around a decade ago I remember the journalist Mr. Kevin Myers writing an opinion piece in The Irish Independentin which he tried to dig down into the world of quangos in this country. The one that confused him the most was Pobal. I will never forget his opening paragraph. A journalist's opening paragraph should always capture the imagination and attention of the reader. He asked the readers of The Irish Independentif they had ever heard of Pobal. He followed up by saying that they probably had not, but they should have because the organisation had a very significant budget. He then asked what exactly it did. Perhaps the only person reading back then who would have known the answer was the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Prior to coming here this morning I have been contacted by many community childcare providers. They know what Pobal is. Following the so-called forensic audit, these hard-pressed childcare providers are being told by the watchdog that they owe money due to supposedly having received overpayments. I would like to have something explained to me. Why did the watchdog, that is, Pobal, which is in receipt of €500 million of taxpayers' money, only really start to do these so-called forensic audits of community childcare services in the last year of the programme? The programme has been in existence since 2008. What monitoring practices have actually existed for the last decade? Second, what is the estimated total loss to the Exchequer in the last decade as a result of this lack of adequate checks on payments by Pobal? What is the process for recoupment?