Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To return to the comparison of resources that I raised earlier, Senator Boyhan makes a valid point that it is a very small number of members of the local authority who would be members of the audit committee and so, first, would be aware of the LGAS reports and, second, would be aware of the response to that report, and then would have an ability to raise it in what is often a very busy council agenda. Those members have no extra staff, for example, to help them carry out that work in addition to their current role, and they have no additional resources available to them. My question is this. While the LGAS carries out its audit with full diligence and so on, I do not believe there are the correct resources at each local authority level or the ability for them to bring forward concerns to a full council meeting. It does a disservice to all of the work done by the LGAS that it sometimes falls on a few ears, if not a few deaf ears. I do not feel that the structure available to Members of this House in respect of non-local government spending through the Comptroller and Auditor General is available in local government. I hope the witnesses might have a view on that because I am sure they are very proud of the work the LGAS carries out.

I would say that themes develop in local authorities where local authority members do not have the power to change national legislation but, as a result of the lack of movement in national legislation, there are then audit issues. I will give an example, the collection of fines for waste management, such as litter fines and so on. Often, the very difficult process of collecting those fines has a chilling effect and the local authority does not bother to issue them because it is too difficult to collect them. The local authority member cannot change national legislation, so the local authority member gives up or runs into a brick wall, and there is no natural connection point between that problem and making changes at national level. Obviously, local authority members will raise it through their Senators but that is a democratic expression, if the witnesses know what I mean, not an audit. That issue of local authority fines is one example. There might also be legal services for the eviction of tenants and, again, many local authorities have given up trying to evict problem tenants because of the legal services costs surrounding that. There might be the issue of the rents due by council tenants. In Dublin City Council, the last rent figure was something like €20 million and that is because of structural issues that local authority members do not have the power to change. Therefore, even if they call it to account, get the time and resources, bring it to a committee, get it raised and bring it to the full council meeting, they do not have the power to resolve the issue.

I appreciate that the LGAS is the auditor but there is a frustration at local and national level that all of the good work done by the LGAS does not get an airing and there does not seem to be a systematic approach to connecting those problems with changes in national legislation. I hope that does not do a disservice to any of the work done by the LGAS.