Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 18 October 2018
Public Accounts Committee
2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 6 - Vote Accounting and Budget Management
Vote 11 - Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform
Vote 12 - Superannuation and Retired Allowances
2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 2 - Collection of Pension Contributions due to the Exchequer
Chapter 3 - Control of Funding for Voted Public Services
Chapter 5 - Vote Accounting and Budget Management
Vote 11 - Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform
Vote 12 - Superannuation and Retired Allowances
Comptroller and Auditor General Special Report 95: Financial Reporting in the Public Sector
Comptroller and Auditor General Special Report 99: Public Sector Financial Reporting for 2015
Comptroller and Auditor General Special Report 100: Public Sector Financial Reporting for 2016
9:00 am
Mr. Robert Watt:
I agree. There are very specific provisions which allow for exclusion from the procurement rules, but they are very specific. In general, non-compliance outside of those exclusion provisions is not acceptable.
I saw it with the Comptroller and Auditor General a number of years ago and we debated at this committee, but the last report, which I am not quite sure whether it was for Civil Service bodies or what part of the public service, showed a very, very high compliance with procurement. I am trying to remember but it was a number of years ago, and I think it was €124 million of procurement was non-compliant, which was about 0.2% or 0.3% of the total subset that the Comptroller and Auditor General looked at. I do not know whether he can remember the details. We had a discussion about it at this stage in terms of materiality and whether that material was lost. The conclusion of that report was, ultimately, that it was material and it was very clear in terms of compliance.
What Deputy Cullinane is saying is that, since then, he has encountered, and I kind of disagree with him-----