Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 22 November 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs

European Court of Auditors Annual Report 2022: Discussion

Mr. Tony Murphy:

As I said earlier, there is pressure and there is a trend in terms of us identifying potential cases and forwarding them. It all takes time. What we send this year will not be in our report until next year. They all pass through me and I have to send them on. I have noted a slight increase in the number of cases but these are only suspicions and they may end up being nothing. We have to have professional scepticism. I would always err on the side of forwarding. We do not do any filtering or make a decision ourselves, we just pass the cases on without any further intervention. We let the experts deal with them.