Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Larkin and she may return to the other points later.

In a similar vein, I have a question that I also put to NOAC. I am a member of the Committee of Public Accounts and the discussion about the degree of oversight of public spending at local government level has taken place at the Committee of Public Accounts and this committee. I say this as someone who was a member of a local authority for over ten years. The discussion at the Committee of Public Accounts concerned the fact that the function of the Comptroller and Auditor General but, perhaps more importantly, the resources that are available to the members of the committee to scrutinise the audit constitute a really important function. While the structures are there at local government level, the resources might not necessarily be there for members of local authorities and independent members of the audit committee to scrutinise the audit produced by the LGAS in the same way as is done at the Committee of Public Accounts. There was a concern among whether we should be asking whether there should be additional resources for members of audit committees to allow them to scrutinise these. Senator Boyhan raised the issue of independent companies operated by local authorities but there is also an argument around shared services, for example, Dublin Fire Brigade or the Dublin Region Homeless Executive. The same examples can be found in waste management and other areas. It is very difficult for a member of a local authority audit committee to scrutinise the delivery of spending by a shared service when they do not necessarily have the local knowledge that applies to a local authority they might not necessarily be part of or affiliated to. Has the LGAS looked at this? Does it believe that this committee should make recommendations to improve the resources available to local authority members and independent members of audit committees to give them greater scrutiny?

Programmes like the recent edition of "Prime Time" show the local government sector in a very negative light when many of us here know the significant amount of positive work done by local authorities and local councillors on behalf of their communities. When you do not get proper scrutiny or when audits are not properly scrutinised, sometimes you do not get to the bottom of why decisions were made, which can have a negative impact.

I have been aware of a decision at audit level in Dublin City Council where a circular regarding travel expenses for local authority members was misinterpreted by a staff member. As a result, every member of that local authority between 2018 and the date on which it was discovered owes an amount because of an error by a staff member. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am one of those people. The penalty does not to me because I do not intend to run again for the local authority in this cycle, so I can pay it off at my own discretion or through my retirement arrangements. However, those who want to run again as local authority members now have to repay that full amount in advance of running again for election. In some cases, a local authority member will have to repay 10% of his or her salary in advance of running again in a local election because of an error that was made by a staff member. It is an example of how we do not often get to the bottom of why decisions are made and if a penalty does apply, it often unfairly falls on the local authority member rather than on the local authority itself.