Bille í seo nach gá mórán a rá in a thaoph. This Comptroller and Auditor-General (Amendment) Bill, 1944, is a simple measure, the object of which is to rectify what might be regarded as technical matters—perhaps "defects" would be the word to use in connection with them—that have been found to exist in the Comptroller and Auditor-General Act, 1923. Section 2 of that Act provides for the payment of the salary of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, which salary was to be a charge on the Central Fund. It gave no direction as to where the pension was to be paid from. This Bill proposes that the pension shall be charged in the same way as the salary. There are also certain ambiguities in the text of sub-section (4) of Section 2 of the Principal Act.
The intention of that sub-section was to secure that a civil servant appointed to the post of Comptroller and Auditor-General would not be in a worse position in regard to superannuation than if he had not been so appointed. Effect was given to this intention by providing that the superannuation terms which applied to him while he was a civil servant would, if he so elected, continue to apply to him in his capacity of Comptroller and Auditor-General in lieu of the normal terms prescribed in the Principal Act. For this purpose his service as Comptroller and Auditor-General was to be treated as civil service for the purpose of award under the Superannuation Acts. It was not quite clear that the sub-section, as appearing in the Principal Act, fully covered the grant of a lump sum on retirement or a gratuity on death, both of which are essential features of civil service superannuation, and Section 2 of the Bill is intended to put that matter beyond doubt.