Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

The effect of this amendment is to delete section 10. This section is consequential to the board's changed role regarding decision making in that it removes the accountability of the chairperson to the Committee of Public Accounts for decisions on disbursements made by the former board. Removal of this section will create an anomaly whereby the board would no longer make decisions on disbursements but its chairman would remain accountable to the Committee of Public Accounts for decisions in which he or she no longer had arole.

We have considered this matter and have consulted but we are still of the same opinion. When the new board arrangements come into place and a disbursement takes place, the person accountable for that disbursement to the Committee of Public Accounts will be the Accounting Officer of the relevant Department. Therefore, if one is unhappy with a disbursement, one wants an explanation or one wants to call someone to account and one is a member of the Committee of Public Accounts, the person one would call in is the Secretary General of the relevant Department which disbursed the money. To call in the chairman of the board, who would not have made the disbursement, would create an anomaly because one would be calling in the wrong person. This is about having one person accountable for the spend and not two people. We must make the agencies making the disbursements, namely, Departments, accountable.

We checked this matter and in the case of bodies which do not make disbursements directly, the relevant chairperson is not accountable to the Committee of Public Accounts.

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