Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Question 105: To ask the Minister for Finance if he has any responsibility [i]vis-À-vis [/i]State and State sponsored bodies to ensure their accountability to both Government and the public; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9687/11]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Government is committed to ensuring that State agencies are accountable to the Government, the Oireachtas and the public. As the Deputy may be aware, the Programme for Government sets out a number of reforms that will be undertaken in this area. These include issues such as appointments to State boards, the role of boards, the extension of the Parliamentary Question system, the introduction of a requirement that chief executives attend the relevant Oireachtas committee on a regular basis to answer questions, and the extension of the provisions of the Freedom of Information Acts. The Annual Output Statements were introduced in 2007 to provide a means of setting out information on the performance of organizations, alongside the presentation of their financial resource requirements in the annual Estimates process. The Government Programme includes a commitment to improve upon these processes and to sharpen the focus upon performance and accountability. It is not enough for organisations and State agencies to be transparent about what they are spending; the public are entitled to know what they are delivering, and this is what the Government is determined to bring about. I will be developing models for progressing this aspect of the reform agenda in the near future with a view to early implementation.

In terms of financial accountability, many of the non-commercial state bodies are accountable, on a legislative basis, to the Public Accounts Committee. In addition, the Orders of Reference from Dáil Éireann have given the Public Accounts Committee powers to "send for persons, papers and records", which gives the Committee considerable scope to enquire in detail into public spending and related matters of public interest.

In the case of agencies with no specific legislative requirements for accountability to the Dáil, any amendment of legislation would be a policy matter for the relevant Ministers in the first instance. I will, however, keep the matter under review and would generally agree that, as legislation relating to individual State agencies is renewed, the question of formally designating CEOs as accountable persons to the Dáil should be considered.