John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I understand that point and I acknowledge the positive work done by the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General. Having examined the role of the office over the past ten to 15 years, however, has the Government not determined that there is a clear signal from that analysis of a requirement for the office to do much more detailed work on the accounts? Should it perhaps be looking at more than the current number of agencies, particularly those under Departments, to allow the detail to be drilled down into? The Government should be encouraging a greater level of auditing, and that can only be achieved by increasing the numbers of staff, the various headings in the allocated budget and by ensuring that the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General is more widespread and inclusive than it is.

In his opening remarks, the Minister mentioned the Comptroller and Auditor General and the valuable work being undertaken by his office. He also talked about the functions of the office and that it examines the spending of taxpayers' money. The office does not, however, look at all the spending of taxpayers' money. The Comptroller and Auditor General does not examine the role of local government.

There is very little real detail in that in the granular format we want in order to be able to analyse the efficiencies or otherwise of local government. I encourage the Government, as I have been doing for a while, that there should be one audit service, namely, the Comptroller and Auditor General, which should incorporate local government and everything else. That would achieve greater efficiencies and a better audit because it would be able to go down into every figure. I would like to see the office being expanded, not for the sake of it, but to include more value for money reports and investigations into how money is spent in, for example, big organisations like the HSE and local government. We are spending a lot of money on housing and should look at that too.