Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 20 June 2017
Public Accounts Committee
2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - Garda Síochána - Internal Audit Report on Garda College, Templemore (Resumed)
9:00 am
Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Personal relationships and interpersonal disputes can exist. However, there are checks and balances all the way, such as internal audit, the head of finance, an audit committee and a section 41 possibility. All of these fail-safe mechanisms and systems should militate against any interpersonal disputes. They did not work, however. It was only when someone outside the organisation disrupted the system that this started to unfold, including the internal auditor realising he had a right to far more information than he was being afforded. I find it difficult to accept that the Commissioner sees this as an internal interpersonal dispute in that context. The checks and balances will not work if these are seen as that. The ongoing management then becomes a concern in the context of the potential repetition of all of this.