Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 25: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if, in the interests of clarity and accountability she will in future ensure that all parliamentary questions relating to the day to day expenditure at FÁS or other bodies, groups or agencies under her aegis are answered by her in the Houses of the Oireachtas; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [41080/09]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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As Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, I am directly accountable to the Oireachtas for the activities of my Department and my Department's own expenditure decisions. In that regard, together with the Ministers of State assigned to the Department, I answer parliamentary questions, adjournment debates, etc, on our departmental policies and strategies. I also present my Department's Annual Output Statement to the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment each year.

Consistent with the duties and responsibilities assigned under the Ministers and Secretaries Acts, the Comptroller and Auditor General Acts and the Public Service Management Act, the Secretary General of the Department is the Accounting Officer and appears before the Public Accounts Committee to answer questions on the detail of the Department's expenditures. Furthermore, those expenditures are examined each year by the Comptroller and Auditor General, who publishes his findings, and whose report informs the annual PAC consideration of the Department's Appropriation Account.

In addition, a number of agencies operate under the aegis of my Department in supporting the development and delivery of our enterprise and labour market programmes in particular. The roles and responsibilities of these agencies are set out in their establishment legislation, as amended from time to time. The chief officer of each agency, and the chairman of each agency board, is directly accountable to the Oireachtas through our committee system where they can be called to account for individual elements of agency expenditures. It would, therefore, be inappropriate for me to answer for the day-to-day decisions and expenditures of the individual agencies when Oireachtas members have such a direct facility to call to account the heads of each agency in relation to their stewardship of the agency and the day-to-day expenditure decisions they take.

I believe that these systems, which are well-established over a long period of time, operate in a manner that strikes the appropriate balance between the principle of democratic accountability by me as Minister and the demands on the agencies to perform efficiently and effectively the functions for which they were established in their own right. They ensure that the Oireachtas can accesses all pertinent information on "day to day expenditure" directly from those who are immediately responsible for taking such decisions, while also holding Ministers directly accountable for overall policy decision or directions.