Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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We are joined today by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr. Seamus McCarthy, who is a permanent witness to the committee. He is joined by Georgina O'Mahoney, deputy director of audit. Apologies have been received from Deputy Pat Deering. We are holding over the minutes to a further meeting and moving on to the next item, correspondence. There are three categories of correspondence. Category A is briefing documents and opening statements in respect of the meetings. Nos. 1701 A and 1702 A are from Ms Cliodhna Sweeney of the State Claims Agency, dated 6 November 2018, and enclose the opening statement and briefing information for today’s meeting. We will note and publish this. Agreed? Agreed. We will discuss it during our meeting with the State Claims Agency, which will begin shortly.

The next category is category B, correspondence from Accounting Officers and Ministers, correspondence following up from meetings of the Committee of Public Accounts and other items for publishing. We held over a number of items from previous meetings. We can continue to hold some over but I want to take two of them because they have been on our desk for a while. No. 1490 B is from the Government accounting unit in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, dated 18 July. We have a duty to deal with it because it was received so far back. It encloses a minute from the Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform in response to our first periodic report which covered the period from September to October 2017. This might not take as long as it looks like it might because I have gone through it. If members are happy for me to guide them through these they can pick me up on any point. We have to deal with some of these. They are an important follow-up on our own work programme. We have already noted and published the correspondence.

We are now dealing with No. 1490 B from the Government accounting unit which relates to our period report. We had a series of recommendations in that report. The system is that the report goes to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, which gets responses from the individual line Departments and comes back with the responses from the Ministers. We will not debate all of these again because we have debated them at length. The first recommendation in the report is B.1. This letter deals with our earlier recommendations and the report we published in respect of An Garda Síochána, the Health Information and Quality Authority, the Industrial Development Authority, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, Tusla and the Health Service Executive. I propose to quickly summarise the responses from the Ministers. I will not read them in detail as it is an extensive document but our recommendations have been out there for quite some time.

The first issue related to the reopening of Garda stations. The second recommendation was that the reopening of Garda stations should be included in the Estimates process for 2018. These stations included Stepaside. The third recommendation was that the OPW should carry out a detailed examination of Stepaside Garda station. We recently received detailed information from the OPW. It gave us, for the first ever time on the public record, a breakdown of the costs of the different projects in respect of the Garda stations. It has accepted the response which said that it should be a policing decision. We have received that information since. We note that and move on.

With regard to the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, we recommended that an examination of the cost of agency staff be carried out. We all understand that employing agency staff is more expensive. The response says that the Minister for Health accepts the recommendation with regard to HIQA carrying out an examination. We are now writing to HIQA or the Department of Health as appropriate for a follow-up on that recommendation.

We want an update on recommendation B.4.

We will move on to B.5, which is a request. At that stage, we had asked for additional staff vacancies in HIQA to be filled. The Department stated recently that appointments below the grade of principal officer on the standard scale no longer require sanction from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The Department of Health can give sanction directly. The Department gave us the numbers, which have increased from 198 at the end of 2016 to 216 at the end of 2017. There has been an improvement and we will return to that issue.

We asked for a breakdown of the consultancy services mentioned in HIQA's 2016 accounts and for further information to be provided. We will ask the secretariat to circulate a copy of the 2017 HIQA accounts and we can see whether the authority complied with that in its 2017 accounts.

The next item relates to IDA Ireland. The committee recommended that IDA Ireland review its methodology to verify the number of jobs created by its client companies. To be put it bluntly, the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation does not accept this recommendation. We will discuss this briefly because a follow-up question arises. The Department states that it carries out the employment annual survey, which is done on a voluntary basis whereby companies return the survey. The Department states the survey has a track record over many years of identifying employment trends. I find this interesting because it is a bit like the practice of basing figures on house completions on ESB connections. The argument that it should continue because it has been taking place for a number of years does not satisfy us. To give us some comfort that this survey is meaningful we will write to IDA Ireland and ask what percentage of companies overall respond to its survey. If the survey covers 5% of companies, we need to know that and if it has a 95% response rate, we can have a high degree of confidence in it. We need some information on the survey and on how extensive it is. We will draft an appropriate letter. Maybe it will be fine or maybe there will be a problem, but we do not know based on the answers provided so far.

We will move onto transport infrastructure. This recommendation was about publishing post-project reviews of public private partnerships, PPPs. That has been accepted. Following our meeting on this issue, our recommendation was implemented by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on 26 March when it issued Circular 06/2018. The circular provides that all new projects must publish a post-project review within a reasonable timeframe and reviews for current projects must be published as soon as possible. That is ongoing issue to which we will return because PPPs are part of our work programme this year.

The next recommendation was that Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, avail of road safety reports from the Road Safety Authority, RSA, to develop its objectives for future investment. The Department states that TII avails of the reports as they become available and continues to use road safety benefits in prioritising where funding is allocated and improvement works are carried out.

The next item relates to Tusla. The recommendation was to ensure a proper service level agreement is in place with all Tusla funded organisations. At this stage, we will write to Tusla requesting an update on how it is getting on with the recommendation because it was made a couple of months ago. Recommendation B.12, which also relates to Tusla, is on procurement. There are serious issues with procurement in Tusla. The organisation states it now has an internal procurement support section which deals with communications, data access and training. We will continue to monitor that. The recommendation has been accepted.

The next recommendation was that Dr. Geoffrey Shannon's report, Audit of Processes and Procedures adopted by Members of An Garda Síochána in Initiating the Provisions of Section 12 of the Child Care Act 1991, be implemented. That has been accepted. That is following up on a policy issue. The letter we received in July stated that Tusla and the Garda Síochána were currently in the process of agreeing a memorandum of understanding on information sharing and data protection. We need an update on whether such an agreement is now in place. We will probably not receive a copy of the agreement but we want to know whether the memorandum of understanding has been completed.

B.15 deals with the delays in the HSE implementing the process of appointing a lead community health organisation, CHO, in cases where national organisations have a number of agreements with different community health organisations. The HSE is now appointing one CHO region to deal with that, which is fine. We will raise the matter with the HSE when its representatives appear before us again.

The next item was the review being carried out by the HSE regarding non-compliance with public sector pay policies. This is a little dated but the HSE indicated that 745 business cases had been presented by section 38 organisations. Some 351 had been dealt with and 394 were being examined. According to the HSE, given the scale of the complexity of the matter, it would not be possible to bring the process to a conclusion early in 2018. However, it indicated the process should be concluded by the end of 2018. We will ask for an update on that. The HSE accepted our recommendation but we want to see if it is being implemented.

We also recommended making an ex gratia payment to employees of Console employees. The response indicated that the Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform was not in a position to comment on the matters arising in respect of the organisation Console, having regard to the fact that this is a section 39 agency and, accordingly, its staff are not public servants. That is fine and we will note that response. We have done what we can. Individual members can chase up on the matter but the Minister is not accepting the recommendation and we cannot make him do so. There is nothing to prevent individual members from continuing to raise the issue.