I thank the Chairman and his colleagues for this opportunity to meet them.
The Comptroller and Auditor General has effectively and fairly fully described the chronology of events and the background to the awarding of the tender for the LIRC building. As he described, the process began initially in summer 1998 when the design team employed by the institute went through a restricted tendering process initially and of 12 indications of interest it excluded four. One of the persons in the excluded group essentially sought legal advice and the institute also sought legal advice on his exclusion. On the basis of this advice the institute decided to recommence the process of tendering. That process began again in summer 1999 at which point one of the people who was excluded in the first batch was a successful tenderer and, as the Comptroller and Auditor General has pointed out his tender came in at 700,000 less than the lowest of the previous eight tenderers.
The delay, in that sense, represented a gain, a financial return to the State. One, however, recognises there were weaknesses in the process. As the Comptroller and Auditor General pointed out, a number of lessons have been learned from this episode. Standard EU notice for works contracts has been agreed at national level and standard procedures for short listing have emerged at national level. There has been a realisation of the need for training and it has been implemented in the area of procurement. While I am new to this sector, I look forward to considering the appointment of a procurement officer. I recognise the expertise and the returns that would be made to an institute like ours, if we have the resources to appoint a procurement officer. There is a specific clause in the memorandum of agreement with architects concerning procurement. In one sense, some learning has been taken from it. Members will be pleased to hear that the building has been completed on time and within budget and will be handed over next Friday.
With regard to the issue of the timeliness of accounts, which the Comptroller and Auditor General raised, we readily acknowledge this is an issue in the institute and we are unhappy about it. I do not necessarily want to detain members by going through a list of our problems in terms of staff numbers and so on. As to the solutions, the staffing issue is being addressed at a national level via the Chapman Flood Mazars report. We now have, for the first time, the full complement of staff in our finance office. That staffing problem there was a serious one.
I mentioned in my submission that having crossed the binary divide, it has been very clear to me that the number of non-academic staff in my institute is proportionately much less than anything I am familiar with in the university sector. It is taking us a while to get our staffing numbers in order. That part is being dealt with. The Comptroller and Auditor General referred to the delay in the completion of the accounts for 1999. This arose primarily because of the absence of procedures for putting in place an asset register. Those procedures are now in place and we will have completed the register before the end of the year.
The third area of our work is the integration of our payroll, especially with the nominal ledger. This has now been done and we are looking, as the last part of the process, at essentially digitising our personnel systems in order that we have integration within personnel and payroll. We are in the process of addressing the shortcomings in our reporting. We have monthly budgetary reporting and budgetary profiling in the institute. We now report monthly to the governing body on expenditure in the context of the overall budgetary profile for the year. On this basis you will find that our reporting sequencing and processes will be considerably improved.
