Results 10,501-10,520 of 35,132 for speaker:Seán Fleming

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: People can read the full details of that in the annual report and financial statement, which is available. I will ask the secretariat to send an email.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: I do not know. As a result of our work here, some extra resources were given for the finance function for various education and training boards, ETBs. That is really as a result of our work in the past 18 months in the sector. Additional staff have been appointed to the finance sections in each of the department to try to deal with the matter.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: There is the centralised function.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: We know each education and training board has an internal audit committee but the question is how many of them have had the resources to carry out some internal audit work.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: The unit might be in Cavan.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: It is the internal audit function on a shared basis for all the education and training boards. I suspect some education and training boards have had no internal audit work carried out-----

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: We need to write to the Department to ask for the number of internal audit programmes or work carried out for each of the education and training boards. We can then see where are the gaps. We need to get that.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: In the Department there is a lack of adequate resourcing for the internal audit function nationwide.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: We will write to the Department about a full assessment.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: It is a centralised unit. We need to know the number of staff and how many internal audits have been carried out.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: We will ask the Department to give us a full breakdown on the internal audit function and staffing.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: We are getting there eventually. We should have tripped over this before now.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: We must accept the Department of Education and Skills was very poor in not getting timely financial statements from education and training boards in the first place. It will say this always happens in the merging of organisations and there is always a couple of years of build-up. However, that excuse is now well worn, to be honest. We have been on the case to get the accounts done and that...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: Yes.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: We will write to the Department on that basis and we might have to delve deeper when we get the response.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: We want to know what happened in 2017 and 2018, as well as the plans for 2019, and we will say that in our letter to the Department. That will give us a good and clear picture of whether there is improvement. The other two items are financial statements before us. They are the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority clear audited opinion and the Heritage Fund.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: Okay. It is a clear audit opinion.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: We got the document on the OPW from a senior employee in the organisation. As there were some possibly defamatory remarks or a suggestion of possible corruption, we decided not to publish it without considering redacting it. The document was circulated to members. That was several days ago. I am not talking about the second letter and I will come to it in a moment. The document was...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: I am told something has arrived from the Office of Public Works today.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (8 Nov 2018)

Seán Fleming: We circulated the correspondence for this week over 24 hours ago. There is nothing else in the work programme we cannot discuss next week. We will just move on to today's business but before bringing in the witnesses, we must go into private session to discuss one item of correspondence.