John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for putting down this Commencement matter. The whole area of local government and local government expenditure was covered, as the Senator mentioned, by the Local Government Reform Act 2014, which established the National Oversight and Audit Committee. The matter of examining how local authorities expend their resources and the value for money delivered for rate-payers and taxpayers across the country is a very significant issue, and the Senator is right to raise it. The 2014 Act seems to have left a gap between the work that NOAC does and any measurable outcome at parliamentary level. In theory at least, the reports that NOAC produces can be covered by the Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government, but in practice the housing aspect of that committee's remit is by far and away the busiest, and the local government reports do not seem to get as much coverage. Shortly after I was appointed I attended a meeting with NOAC when I heard one was taking place in the Customs House. I was the first Minister of State to go to one of their meetings. I was impressed by the personnel involved. They included former long-serving councillors and also long-serving management officials from across the country. These were people who had a very serious interest in the area as well as a significant level of expertise.

I am more than interested, I am in fact determined to ensure that the gap that exists at present between the activities of NOAC and those of the Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government can be bridged in some way. As things stand, there will be a local government Bill next year. It is my intention that there will be provision in that Bill for strengthening the oversight of expenditure within local authorities. As NOAC is currently constituted, its functions include scrutiny of the performance of local authorities; support of best practice; overseeing implementation of national local government policy; and monitoring and evaluating implementation of corporate plans. It generally operates through subgroups, including a financial performance subgroup, that oversee different aspects of its work. Each subgroup consists of three or four members out of the ten members of NOAC, and publishes annual local authority performance indicators and composite public spending code quality assurance reports.NOAC generally operates through subgroups, including a financial performance subgroup that has been set up to oversee different aspects of NOAC's work. Each subgroup comprises three or four members from NOAC's total membership of ten people. Each year, NOAC publishes local authority performance indicators and composite public spending code quality assurance reports.

I was interested to hear what the Senator had to say at the outset about the interest taken by the media in the activities of the Committee of Public Accounts. The perception and the work of that committee have changed greatly in the past ten years. It has become a very political committee. It was not as political in the past. This change has positive and negative aspects. I am not convinced that adding local authority responsibility to the areas the committee has to examine is necessarily the right way to go. I think we should try to make the NOAC system work more properly and fully than it does at present.

It is worth pointing out that when the reform legislation was being drafted and considered in the Oireachtas, consideration was given to the possibility of merging the Local Government Audit Service, which audits the 31 existing local authorities, and the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General. While it was decided at the time not to merge the two organisations, the process led to engagement between senior managers in the two auditing bodies on enhanced co-operation arrangements in areas like professional training, value for money methodologies and approaches, and the possibility of issuing joint reports within their existing respective mandates.

The possibility of the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Committee of Public Accounts having a role in further ensuring appropriate oversight of expenditure of public funds by local authorities can be reconsidered by the Oireachtas with particular regard to commitments in A Programme for a Partnership Government. At present, my priority is to finalise the reports on local government which are promised under the programme for Government. At that stage, I will examine the matters that are to be addressed in the legislation that is to be introduced next year. Clearly, most of that legislation will flow from the reform reports. I am personally committed to the idea of greater national scrutiny and oversight of the finances expended by local authorities throughout the country.