Mr. Robert Watt:

I hope we are in regard to this matter. I refer to special reports 95, 99 and 100 of the Comptroller and Auditor General on financial statements for the years ending 2014, 2015 and 2016. The reports review the timeliness of public sector financial reporting for those years, identify bodies where delays occurred and summarise the issues brought to attention in the audit reports. The general trend in the timeliness of the financial reports for audit has been positive, as has been stated. For 2016, all appropriation accounts were produced by the required deadline of three months. For other accounts, 50% of bodies submitted their 2016 financial statements for audit within three months of the end of their accounting period, compared with 40% of bodies in 2015 and only one third of public sector bodies in 2014. There has been a significant improvement in the timeliness of presentation of audited financial statements to the Oireachtas. Over 80% of 2016 financial statements were presented on time, compared with 70% for 2015 and less than 60% for 2014. As Mr. McCarthy mentioned, we hope there will be an improvement this year. Furthermore, the number of accounts in arrears, which are accounts not certified by the end of the year following the year of account, at the end of 2017 was almost halved compared with the end of 2015.

Special Report 95 recommends that my Department consider requiring Departments to include an annexe in their appropriation accounts reporting on the presentation of audited financial statements to the Oireachtas by bodies under their aegis. I informed the committee last year that I accepted this recommendation, and it was included as a requirement for the 2017 appropriation accounts. That requirement, along with the issue being highlighted by the Comptroller and Auditor General, the committee and the Department following on from the recommendations has led to some improvement. However, as always with this type of issue, we must remain vigilant. It does not apply to Departments, which produce their accounts after quarter 1 and are audited appropriately and so forth. Rather, it relates to bodies outside of central government and that is where the issues have arisen in the past. We must be vigilant to ensure that Accounting Officers understand their responsibilities and continue to deliver. The key issue for us is to keep the pressure on and keep reminding those responsible that they have obligations relating to accounts being prepared, audited and presented in a timely fashion.

Certain issues relating to the presentation of accounts should be considered. Some accounts have to be approved by a Minister or go to the Government and we should consider whether that is necessary. That is something at which we must look because sometimes it is not an issue for the Government, which just notes the annual report and the accounts, but there may be a backlog in terms of Government business. We should seek to streamline that to ensure that the percentage gets above the 80% for which we are aiming.

I wish to highlight some key recent outputs that testify to the impact and breadth of the Department's activities some of which I have mentioned. Since we established the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service, which is a key part of the work of the Department, we have published over 200 papers in order to better inform Government decision making on how public money is spent. Since its launch in September 2017 the new learning and development centre, OneLearning, has had over 10,500 attendances at training courses across 44 Civil Service organisations and 23 counties. Over 500 candidates have completed the graduate development programme since 2015 and an additional 200 candidates recently commenced the current programme. Since March 2017, almost 13,000 Civil Service managers have attended the managing people and performance training programmes. Over 2.75 million elements of data were collected from 21,000 civil servants during the 2017 employee engagement survey, the results of which were published by the Department last March. The high-speed government cloud network has been rolled out to almost 500 locations nationwide. Seventeen Departments and seven agencies are now connected to OGCIO's build to share applications platform which I mentioned and 35,000 staff have access to the platform. Over 8,200 high-quality data sets are now available via Ireland's open data portal. We are among the top administrations in Europe in terms of the availability of open data. I set out these highlights to try to put in context the amount of money spent within the Vote because sometimes we do not focus enough on the outputs. Ultimately, we provide services across the large Civil Service system , encompassing many Departments and offices.

I wish to pay tribute to the staff of the Department for their hard work and the contribution they have made to what we have achieved. Delivering on the wide remit of our mission requires our employees to have a broad range of skills and perspectives. I am personally invested in ensuring that our people are equipped with the necessary aptitude and expertise to meet the Department's objectives and to fulfil their own career potential. In this regard, I am pleased to say that earlier this year the Department won best learning and development organisation in the medium category at the Irish Institute of Training and Development's 2018 awards. I thank the Chairman and members for their time.