Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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473. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the percentage of Irish Aid's spend that has been independently audited in 2013 and 2014; if there have been any investigations this year regarding the misappropriation of Irish Aid's budget; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49359/14]

Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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All of Irish Aid’s expenditure is independently audited; it is a specific condition of each grant agreement that an independent audit report is provided to my Department. I can confirm that no cases have come to our attention to date in 2014 which would require the Department to carry out its own investigations into the misuse of funds managed under the aid programme. It should be noted that where instances of suspected fraud come to the attention of the Department, these are systematically followed up by the Evaluation and Audit Unit, and are notified to the independent Audit Committee and the Comptroller and Auditor General.