Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 7, subsection (7), line 6, after "Commission." to insert the following:

"The Secretary General and Head of Finance may attend meetings though not as members of the committee.".

I would really like the Minister of State to take on board the issue covered by these amendments. When I was a member of the Commission I was given the On Board document, entitled A Guide for Board Members of State Bodies in Ireland, which stated that the chief executive, head of finance and head of internal audit should attend meetings, although not as members of the audit committee. I struck out the "head of internal audit" because that is the Comptroller and Auditor General in general terms. My first amendment provides that they may attend meetings.

The Minister of State could be seriously embarrassed by some of the points he made in winding up the Second Stage debate because he appeared to be saying that in some way this is a smaller operation. I know, or hope, that he did not intend this to be the case. This commission deals with €120 million per year. Most semi-State bodies do not deal with anything like that amount of money but they are still required, quite rightly, to deal with audit committees.

Senator Alex White made an interesting point this morning when he asked what kind of pressure we are putting on these people who receive only €16,000 a year to do the job. There are many semi-State bodies on which people receive half that amount and they must comply with every comma of the On Board guide and the code of practice for the governance of State bodies issued by the Department of Finance. I discussed this last night with members of the Committee on Public Accounts whom I will not embarrass by naming but they completely agree with my points. This is a serious matter. It is crucial that the head of internal finance and the Secretary General in this case will or may attend meetings of the audit committee to ensure nothing happens behind the Secretary General's back and the Secretary General can be there to deal with all sorts of matters. The head of finance is an important person who takes particular responsibility. That function exists within the Houses. It is not difficult to do this.

My second amendment refers to the Secretary General. The Minister of State said the Secretary General is the Accounting Officer. I agree completely. That is the basis of my amendment. The Bill states: "The committee shall ... advise the Secretary General". The document issued by the Department of Finance this year states that a special arrangement must be made whereby the chairperson of the board is distinguished from the Accounting Officer.

The Minister of State has outlined that distinction quite correctly and that person may be called in front of the Committee on Public Accounts and others. My amendment has anticipated his words by saying that the committee shall "advise the Commission Chair on financial matters relating to his or her functions". There is no conflict in what I am putting forward. I recognise and emphasise the different roles of these people. Stating that the Accounting Officer, who is the Secretary General, has a list of responsibilities seems to imply that there are no separate responsibilities for the chair of the board. The chair of the board is in charge of corporate governance as is written in one of the relevant documents I have mentioned. That needs to be included in the Bill. It is not there at the moment.

The Committee on Public Accounts recently questioned the chairperson of FÁS to explain what happened in that organisation. That man is a personal friend and I followed this case in great detail. In that organisation the audit committee advised the Secretary General and the board never saw that advice. I am not suggesting that will happen in this commission but we must anticipate that in years to come somebody might try to do that. The Bill provides that the audit committee advises the Secretary General. It does not need to go a step further. The Secretary General is not the commission but must decide what to bring before the commission.

How do these people know what they have to do? I am setting up a course in the House for every ICTU nominee to a State body because I want to go through a checklist of the things they must do. I hope to do this in the spring and I will be happy to invite the Minister of State to join us because I know he would be interested in it. I will give them a passing brief on what they need to do. Their relationship with the audit committee is crucial. The audit committee must be available to the board. It should guide the board and not rely on the Secretary General to tell the board its views at second hand.

If the Comptroller and Auditor General makes a report and issues a series of management letters to the Secretary General and, perhaps, to the audit committee, depending on the arrangements in place, as would happen under the arrangements set out here, the board members might never know that a serious management letter went from the Comptroller and Auditor General to the Accounting Officer. Nothing in the Bill requires that to happen. If, for example, over a coffee we talked about a board where something went wrong and someone expressed the view that board members, the directors, would surely know something about it and I said the board members were never told about it, the other person would think I was joking. Nobody would ever believe that something as serious as a management letter might never come before the board, but that can happen because of the way this is structured. The Minister of State should ask Members on the Committee of Public Accounts their view on this. They are trying to put this kind of protection into what they are doing.

The audit committee is there to advise and support the board.