Vol. 176 No. 11
I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £24,300 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1960, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (No. 1 of 1923).
I want to draw the Minister's attention to article 33 of the Constitution, which I shall read out to him:
There shall be a Comptroller and Auditor General to control on behalf of the State all disbursements and to audit all accounts of moneys administered by or under the authority of the Oireachtas.
The words I want to emphasise to the Minister are "to audit all accounts of moneys administerd by or under the authority of the Oireachtas." The remaining subsections of that Article are not relevant to my argument and are merely declaratory of his tenure of office.
The Comptroller and Auditor General is given special status under the Constitution, in consideration of his duty to audit all accounts of moneys administered by or under the authority of the Oireachtas and, properly, that has created in the minds of all those familiar with his office the impression that his duties are, where he considers it necessary, to be critical of the Executive in their administration of money and to report to the Committee of Public Accounts of Dáil Éireann any apprehensions that he may have, and any criticisms he has to make, so that they can be examined by that Committee and, if necessary, reported to Dáil Éireann. Therefore, he is regarded as an absolutely independent person, charged with the responsibility of being critical where that is desirable.
The tendency has grown up through legislation, from time to time as we have constituted in this House State-controlled bodies, to place upon the Comptroller and Auditor General the duty of auditing their accounts. I want to suggest to the Minister for Finance that, in the light of the words of that Article of the Constitution, that is one course of action that we should not pursue because his function is to audit all accounts of moneys administered by or under the authority of the Oireachtas, but the moneys of State-controlled bodies are, by definition, not administered by or under the authority of the Oireachtas. We take great pains to emphasise that they are not administered by or under the authority of the Oireachtas by declaring, again and again, that no Minister can properly answer for the administration of the funds of a semi-State body.
Therefore, I would suggest to the Minister for Finance that, instead of sanctioning the continued practice of naming the Comptroller and Auditor General as the appropriate auditor in legislation for semi-State bodies or, indeed, for any bodies other than the Exchequer, the Minister should object strenuously and give his approval only in the most exceptional cases. Personally I cannot think of any case in which I would urge the Minister to give his approval to such a proposal because I think, on the whole, it would be better to stick strictly to the terms of the Article, and to shift audit responsibility in all other cases to chartered accountants who are obliged, under the Charter of their profession, to carry out certain duties before they are prepared to sign a certificate for publication with the accounts of any enterprise that they may be called upon to examine.
In that way I think we avoid the very undesirable situation arising that every company which is not directly responsible to this House but which is, in fact, responsible to nobody else, can shelter under the umbrella of the certificate of the Comptroller and Auditor General who, as far as I know, has no permanent staff qualified to carry out commercial audits and who, in practice, has to call in consultants. Yet, when the certificate comes to be published it is published as the certificate of the Comptroller and Auditor General. I would much sooner see such bodies publishing the auditor's certificate that they have got from commercial auditors. Then, if this House is, at any time, dissatisfied with the quality of the certificate tendered to it by the State company, or when the Minister on its behalf lays the annual report on the table of Dáil Éireann, one of the intelligent remedies that this House could prescribe would be that they would like a second firm of auditors to do these accounts so that there would be public concurrence between two firms of standing and, if necessary, that, on occasion, foreign auditors might be brought in where there was any reason to believe that circumstances rendered that course desirable.
It is a common thing in Great Britain if a firm is large enough and has international associations, and it is a common thing in the United States of America in similar circumstances, to find the accounts certified by a firm of London auditors and a firm of New York auditors, and in the case of a New York firm, to have a firm of London auditors and a firm of American auditors signing the same balance sheet. That necessity might never arise here but, in my judgment, it would be a very desirable thing that where you had commercial companies operating a semi-State monopoly they would be required to produce accounts annually in a form acceptable to commercial auditors, in the knowledge that such auditors would be fully equipped to query their accounts and insist on all disclosures customarily required in the course of commercial audits, appropriate to the kind of activity that such a body would be carrying on.
This question arises nearly every year on this Estimate. Although the Constitution lays it down that we must have the Auditor General to do what might be regarded as the accounts of Government Departments, it does not say he should stop there. I believe that there was an Act passed which is still in operation, one of the Exchequer and Audits Departments Acts 1866-1921. These place certain duties on the Comptroller and the Auditor General in relation to the trading accounts of State bodies. I could not say in how far any Government Department is bound by these Acts but they do put certain duties on the Comptroller and Auditor General. Apart from that, as Deputies are aware, many Bills dealing with State companies when going through the Dáil actually specify that the audit will be done by the Comptroller and Auditor General. That, I take it, is put in by the Minister concerned because he wants to have the audit done in the same way as other State companies and somewhat on the lines of Government auditing generally so that there will be a certain conformity or likeness between the audits of the various companies.
I can understand the objections made by Deputy Dillon and I am sure he could argue that point just as well as he could argue that the Comptroller and Auditor General should be left where he is. All I can say is that I certainly have an open mind on this matter and if the question of appointing the Comptroller and Auditor General to any new company arises we shall have it examined. I should like to say that some of those who have the Comptroller and Auditor General are anxious to get a change for various reasons, not, indeed, that they have anything against the Comptroller and Auditor General, but they do not like the tie-up, as it were, or the apparent tie-up, with the Government. For that reason, they would prefer to be released from that obligation of having the Comptroller and Auditor General and, in one case, I consented to that. I do not know if there is to be a movement in that direction or not. I can assure the Deputy I have an open mind and I would certainly consider sympathetically any application made to me for a change by any of those companies.
In the event of this course being adopted, is it the Minister's intention to require that two firms of auditors should function or that now one firm——
One firm.
In view of the fact that these are powerful monopolies by their very nature, the question of one or two firms of auditors is one deserving consideration.
The suggestion was never made that there should be two firms of auditors.
