James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I support Deputy Carthy's comments on the work undertaken by RTÉ and commend it on that. I strongly believe that the Committee of Public Accounts should look into the particular area of local authorities and their expenditure and management. There is another Oireachtas committee but it is similar to what we do with the HSE and the Department of Health and we should be looking at local authorities. From my own experience of working as a councillor and coming through here to the Oireachtas, looking back, there are many things that we need to highlight, including, quite frankly, the amount of power that civil servants have within senior management of local authorities across the country. In some cases the budgets they control are astronomical. They are much larger than many people realise. The scrutiny they deserve should be applied to them by this committee. I fully support any mechanism by which we would undertake work on this area. It is definitely something that the Committee on Public Accounts should look into. I support that if that is the view of the room.