asked the Minister for Finance whether he has any proposals for strengthening the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General to enable him, of his own motion, to prevent waste of public money betore it has already been paid away or contractually committed.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Role of Comptroller and Auditor General.
12.
I am not sure that I understand what precisely the Deputy has in mind here. There would be clear difficulties in having the Comptroller and Auditor General involved in a priori decision-making as to public expenditure. This is a matter for Ministers and their Departments and I do not feel that a change in legislation to involve the Comptroller and Auditor General would lead to any improvement, but could result in wasteful duplication. However, if what the Deputy has in mind is a review of effectiveness of expenditure, then I would draw his attention to the Government discussion document of a year ago, A Better Way to spend the Nation's Finances, in which various possibilities for this were put forward, including a possible expansion of the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General. This matter is still under active consideration in my Department in the context of reforming financial procedures.
Nobody is stuck on the Comptroller and Auditor General as such but, in as much as he is a constitutional independent officer, would the Minister not agree that if his only control is a posteriori so that, in other words, he can criticise — for anyone who is bothered listening to him — only wastages which have already taken place, his useful function is very limited in the control of waste; and since Departments are evidently neither able nor willing to avoid waste themselves, there is very much room in——
A question, Deputy, please.
——the situation here for the operation of an independent officer who can be trusted to prevent this happening?
I am fully aware of the need adverted to by the Deputy to improve the control of the effectiveness of public expenditure. As I have said, I am not entirely convinced that the Comptroller and Auditor General would be the appropriate person to carry out that work. I do not dispute for a moment the Deputy's basic thesis that we need to have a much more vigorous a priori examination of the effectiveness and destination of expenditure.