Dr. Elaine Byrne:

When I was doing consultancy work with Transparency International, we published a national integrity report in 2009. That would have involved in 2008 a series of round tables with different actors, including people from the Comptroller and Auditor General's office. From what we gathered, the effectiveness of the Committee of Public Accounts is often based on the relationship between the Chair of that committee and the Comptroller and Auditor General as to what to focus on and what not to. So, there is very much an informal aspect to it.

I think a lot of agencies, whether it is the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Criminal Assets Bureau, the Competition Authority or whatever it may be, are very reluctant to say publicly they need more resources. If one goes through the cuts that have been made to different agencies that have responsibility for oversight in the past four or five years, some of the cuts have been incredible - 20% or 25% - at a time when their workload has increased. It seems a very counterproductive effort.