Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail)
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I note the conclusion in respect of extending FOI to the Presidency is under review and advice has been sought from the Office of the Attorney General by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. We received a note from the petitioner who said it should be noted that the Office of the President is subject to public scrutiny via the Comptroller and Auditor General. I am a member of the Committee of Public Accounts and the President’s office was very topical last October. People questioned whether we should be delving into that particular area. We published our fifth periodic report two weeks ago and it included a chapter on this issue. I note what the petitioner said, namely, that as a citizen of Ireland who pays his tax, he feels concerned that the spending of the President is not made public in detail.

The Office of the President has a spend of X that is public and it comes before the Committee of Public Accounts. There is an audit committee which we probed as well in terms of how it met our requirements. That was laid bare prior to the election and indeed since as well. While there is a spend of X on the Office of the President, what is not taken into account is the whole plethora of associated expenditure for the President, let us call it Y, which does not come under the auspices of the Office of the President but comes under the remit of several other Departments. The petitioner’s point in terms of the President being answerable to the Comptroller and Auditor General is correct and there is an audit committee up and running as well.

We brought the relevant Accounting Officer before the Committee of Public Accounts. The Secretary General of the Department of the Taoiseach is answerable on the Office of the President but he does not answer for all the other additional expenditure. I refer, for example, to the Garda, which is the responsibility of the Department of Justice and Equality, and the OPW, which comes under the remit of the Department of Finance. It is just like local government, which is not answerable to the Committee of Public Accounts, which has a plethora of different funds flowing into it, a myriad of things as the Comptroller and Auditor General has said. The Office of the President is nearly on a par, although nothing could top the local government situation, as other Departments are involved. What we said at the Committee of Public Accounts is that committees in previous Dáileanna were perhaps lax in not having that Vote examined. It is part of a number of Votes that come before the Committee of Public Accounts, as it should, and in that respect there is a more stringent examination of what is being spent there. That should be noted as well.