Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Yes, and their families. The last thing on the work programme is that I want to arrange to send a letter to the Department of Education and Skills. Our work went down very successfully with the HSE and it has thanked us publicly on several occasions for the section 38 and section 39 arrangements in respect of which many of their accounts were years out of date. There was a lack of proper accounting, traceability and governance. We now know from the HSE that all the organisations in those categories have their accounts in a proper manner. They do not fall under our remit but it is good that they have achieved improved accountability in respect of the funding the HSE allocates to them. I want us to do the same in the education sector.

We have improved the situation with the education and training boards. In our report on the third-level sector last year, we referred to time limits for producing accounts for the universities and ITs.

There is another group in respect of which I want to write to the Department of Education and Skills. This relates to a parliamentary question I tabled and a letter I received on 28 February 2018 from the Minister following that parliamentary question which I will put in the committee's documents today. I asked the Department to provide a list of all organisations to which the Department provides funding of more than €1 million per annum where the bodies concerned receive over 50% of their funding from public sources. I did not go down to every small grant. I have a list of 20 or 30 organisations. They may or may not be under our remit. We want the Department to give us a report on when it received the last financial statements in respect of each of them. We are moving to ensure that it does the same with these funded organisations as the HSE has done in respect of section 39 organisations. It will include the ETBs and third level. The organisations include the Educational Research Centre, Grangegorman Development Agency, the National Council for Special Education, the State Examinations Commission and Léargas. Some of them might already be audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General and some might not.