Mr. Michael McCarthy:

I thank Deputy McAuliffe very much for those thoughtful remarks. In terms of the auditing of local government in general, for example, we have 31 local authorities and 31 audit committees. There is the local government audit service in terms of it being well-audited in that respect. In terms of the resources around that, if there was a decision to be made, for example, to bring local authorities into the Committee of Public Accounts, which would certainly be a policy decision, I do not think resources are an issue in that sense.

I get entirely what the Deputy is saying in terms of the elected members' role. I think most people in this room have experience of that. One is pulled in five or six different directions and all of a sudden there is a specialised topic to which one might have to devote time. From our perspective, one of our key focuses in terms of our current work programme is to engage more with elected members and the elected members' bodies, for example, the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG. In August of last year, we had direct engagement with the chairs of the audit committees of the 31 local authorities. That was the first time from NOAC's perspective that we had that direct engagement. We want to develop that engagement going forward.

Ultimately, a decision about comparing the auditing of local authorities and benchmarking that, for example, with the resources the Committee of Public Accounts has would ultimately be a policy decision to be made by either the Oireachtas or by local governments themselves. However, I would argue that it is well audited as we currently stand.