Joe O'Toole (Independent)

That is the point I am making. The committee is only there to advise the Secretary General and to report to the board. That is a serious flaw. Can we imagine a situation where an audit report would only be sent to the chief executive of a company? I could not envisage a situation where it did not go to the chairman of the board. That jumped off the page when I read the Bill, because I saw that the committee has to advise the Secretary General, but not the board and its chairman.

I am not asking the Minister of State to accept my amendment today. If there is a serious problem, the Minister of State should deal with it. I will not push it to a vote. I have made my point and the business of this House is to inform and to bring things to the attention of the Government. If the Department chooses to ignore it, that is the Department's business, but it will be on the record. There is no cost involved, but it means we can open a new set of dynamics within the operation of the board. It is something that can and should work.

When I spoke about independent advice, I was not talking about taking advice on things they were doing. I was referring to independent members of the commission who felt the board was going in the wrong direction, and the possibility that they could take professional advice.

Page 17 of the code of practice states the chairperson should provide interim reports regularly to a Minister. The commission does not have a finance committee, but in fairness, an audit committee could do this. I am not clear whether it does a quarterly budget report and whether the cash flow is in line with the budget. There are issues of safety on which we are taking a risk, and I ask the Minister to respond to them.