The correspondence from the Department has been circulated - details on the affordable housing scheme, the essential repairs grants scheme and the improvement works in lieu of local authority housing schemes - following concerns raised by the Chairman and Deputies McCormack and Guildea at the last meeting. We have correspondence from the Secretary General's Department enclosing details on the cost to date of the East Link and West Link, the receipts to the Exchequer from toll roads and details of toll road revenues. This information was requested by Deputy Durkan when the Secretary General last appeared.
I remind witnesses that they do not enjoy absolute privilege and the attention of members and witnesses is drawn to the fact that, as and from 2 August 1998, section 10 of the Committees of the Houses of the Oireachtas (Compellability, Privileges and Immunities of Witnesses) Act, 1997, grants certain rights to persons who are identified in the course of the committee's proceedings. A list of those has been circulated to members. For the most part, these rights may only be exercised with the consent of the committee. Persons invited before the committee are made aware of these rights and any person identified in the course of proceedings who are not present may have to be made aware of these rights and provided with a transcript of the relevant part of the committee's proceedings if the committee considers it appropriate in the interests of justice. Notwithstanding this provision in the legislation, I remind members of the long-standing parliamentary practice that members should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I now call the Comptroller and Auditor General to comment on paragraph 24.
Paragraph 24 of the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General reads:
The local government audit - LGA - service is responsible for the audit of the accounts of all local authorities. The LGA reports are submitted to the Department of the Environment and Local Government and to the local authorities and form part of the controls exercised by the Department in ensuring that procedures for the spending of public moneys are satisfactory. In 1999, local authorities received £577 million from the Vote and an additional £593 million from the local government fund. Copies of the audit reports are made available to me in my capacity as auditor of the Department. All LGA reports for the main local authorities for 1997 and 1998 with the exception of those for Wicklow County Council have been furnished to me.
In my previous reports I provided information relating to some of the matters on which the LGAs have critically commented in their reports on the audit of local authorities. I noted the following in my review of the 1998 reports:
In contrast to previous years, there were only a few instances where the LGAs found evidence that excess expenditure had been approved by the local authorities after it had occurred.
There was less criticism than in previous years regarding unsatisfactory collection yields on local authority service charges and housing rents and annuities.
The work of the internal auditors in local authorities is in some cases hindered by lack of resources or delayed appointments.
The situation with regard to deficits on capital account, referred to in earlier reports, continued into 1998 with many local authorities reporting specifically very large unfounded debit balances and other balances where it was unclear as to whether the deficits would be funded. Most capital projects are funded by the Department. The LGAs do not always indicate in their reports the precise breakdown between funded and unfunded balances, so the true extent of the unfunded amount is not always clear.
As is the case with other auditors of public bodies falling within the scope of the Prompt Payments Act, 1997, LGAs are required to report their opinion on whether local authorities have complied with the terms of the Act. Of the 38 prompt payments reports examined, seven had been qualified by the LGAs while critical comments had been made in seven others.