Ms Niamh Larkin:

I thank the Senator for all his comments. As for the timeliness of audit reports, we complete all our audits by 31 October every year. We only receive the accounts for most of the local authorities on 1 April and finish all our audits by 31 October. We would be in favour of our audit reports being issued as soon as they are issued to the local authority for the information to be more timely. There are two legislative items relating to this area. There is legislation about sending out the audit report and there is legislation about the audit committees. Those are not coterminous and there is no timeline set out within them. A lot of local authorities publish accounts and send them to councillors as soon as we send them the audit reports. However, some local authorities wait for them to go to the audit committee first for that committee to do its report. Our preference would be for them to be issued as soon as we have issued them.