Vol. 474 No. 4
17 Mr. O'Malley asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry if he will give details of the difficulties with official Irish records that investigators from the EU Court of Auditors had with his Department when they visited on audit duty, as referred to in their annual report. [3173/97]
The Deputy is referring to a report of the Court of Auditors on the clearance of the EAGGF Guarantee accounts for 1992 and certain expenditure for 1993. The report examines how the Commission audited the expenditure declared by member states and reached the clearance decision. The court did not visit Ireland in the course of its work.
In its report the court reported on difficulties which the Commission had in examining export refund files in two audit visits and commented that in a further mission in October 1994 the Commission noted some improvements. The Commission reply, which is included in the report, states that the improvements required of the Irish authorities in its supporting documents and files were verified in the October 1994 visit, and that the Commission were satisfied that the records permitted an audit to be carried out.
The situation as far as my Department is concerned is that difficulties arose because there were not sufficient resources and computerisation in place to manage a large volume of complicated and interrelated transactions in a timely way. Laborious and detailed cross-referencing was required. A task force was put in place at the end of 1993 to deal with the more complicated work, the recording arrangements were overhauled and a programme of computerisation was advanced. The Commission was briefed on the setting up of the task force and on the progressive improvements and the problems have not recurred. The Commission's understanding that the upgrading of this area would take time was greatly appreciated.
The entire element of these refunds and EU funds have been fully computerised since August 1996.
