Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 20 Nov 1968

Vol. 237 No. 5

Interim Report of the Committee of Public Accounts.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): I move:

That Dáil Éireann takes note of the Interim Report dated 13th December, 1967 of the Committee of Public Accounts.

Before I begin I would point out that in this respect I approached the Taoiseach and asked him if he would change his mind and allow it to be discussed in Government time. I did that as I was anxious to have a discussion in as non-partisan a fashion as possible. He was kind enough to agree to my suggestion and for that I now wish to thank him.

This matter may seem at first sight a small matter between two officials. Actually, there are fundamental principles involved. Those of you who have read the interim report will understand that it concerns the position of the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Comptroller and Auditor General derives his authority on two bases, on a Constitutional basis and a statutory basis. His Constitutional basis I will give from Article 33 of the Constitution, page 108 which reads:

1. 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.

2. The Comptroller and Auditor General shall be appointed by the President on the nomination of Dáil Éireann.

3. The Comptroller and Auditor General shall not be a member of either House of the Oireachtas and shall not hold any other office or position of emolument.

4. The Comptroller and Auditor General shall report to Dáil Éireann at stated periods as determined by law.

That is the exact wording which was laid down in the original Constitution in 1922. It has been represented that the statutory position is less satisfactory. The Comptroller and Auditor General Act, 1923, stated that the working of his Department was to be carried out in accordance with the 1866 and 1921 British Acts. Some doubt has been expressed as to whether this matter came within the realm of the Adaptation Act, 1922. It has also been suggested that it is outdated because it is 100 years old. Commercial audit and company law have kept pace with the times but the statutory law in connection with State Departments has remained unchanged since 1866. In practice of course the Gladstonian concept of audit limited to regularity, has for many years been developed and expanded to meet the conditions of modern society by our Comptroller and Auditor General as has been the practice in most modern States. I would direct the attention of the House to page 6 of the interim report which I quote:

We always in the Department of Finance supported his investigation, not just of regularity, but also of economy in the carrying out of policy decisions. We are concerned as the Finance Department with helping him in investigations designed to ensure that there is no failure to get value for money, that there is no inefficiency or waste or inadequate financial control. I would like to emphasise that this is a function of the Comptroller and Auditor General which goes back many, many years. There is nothing essentially new about it. I think that what is new, as probably the Comptroller and Auditor General will confirm, is that this has got an increasing emphasis in recent years. That is all I would like to say for the moment.

That is the contribution in evidence given on the 30th November, 1967, by Mr. Whitaker, Secretary of the Department of Finance.

Now, to give a short résumé of the position as it has developed. In paragraph 2 of his Report on the Appropriation Accounts for 1966-67 the Comptroller and Auditor General states that he requested three files which appeared to relate to travelling expenses of a Garda Superintendent; the supply of medicines to Gardaí in Dublin; and an organisation and methods report relating to the payment of witnesses expenses. The Accounting Officer suggested to him that his request be withdrawn because he saw objection, in principle, to making available any papers which might contain administrative directions or arguments of a policy character and matters of that kind. The Comptroller and Auditor General informed the Accounting Officer that he rejected his suggestion and that the matter would be reported to Dáil Éireann.

In this way the Committee of Public Accounts, of which I had the honour to be Chairman, was called upon to investigate and we took evidence from the Accounting Officer of the Department of Justice, the Secretary, Department of Finance, and the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The question raised is of such fundamental importance to our democratic processes that the Committee decided to present to the House an interim report with the minutes of evidence appended.

I propose to briefly review the evidence tendered to the Committee. The case for the Department of Justice was based on a contention that the Comptroller and Auditor General had no statutory right to demand papers relating to administration or policy proper. His powers are set out in the Exchequer and Audit Departments Acts, 1866 and 1921 and in the Comptroller and Auditor General Act, 1923. Section 28 of the 1866 Act states that — the Comptroller and Auditor General shall have free access, at all convenient times, to the books of accounts and other documents relating to the accounts. But the Accounting Officer was prepared to concede that down the years a system had evolved where Departments recognised that the Comptroller and Auditor General should have the right to inquire into any questions of extravagance or waste in administrative matters which arose out of items of expenditure which the Audit Office had been looking into.

The Accounting Officer further appeared to contend that the Comptroller and Auditor General had changed his procedure for obtaining information, but this was denied by the Comptroller and Auditor General who maintained that audit queries were usually issued after examination of departmental files. The Accounting Officer also mentioned that he had obtained an opinion from the Attorney General which, from the extracts he quoted, appeared to indicate that the powers of the Comptroller and Auditor General to examine departmental files or papers were restricted by law and that the powers of the Committee of Public Accounts were also limited by the Standing Orders of Dáil Éireann.

In a statement supplied to the Committee, the Secretary of the Department of Finance states that it has always been the view of that Department that the Comptroller and Auditor General should be facilitated in investigations designed to ensure that in the carrying out of policy there is no failure to get value for money, no waste or inadequate financial control. This important function has the sanction of custom and good sense rather than of an express statutory provision. It is admitted that there is a rather narrow legislative definition of the scope and powers of the Comptroller and Auditor General's activities. The Department of Finance felt that, in view of the responsibility of the Comptroller and Auditor General in our system of Government, it would be unfortunate if his access to official documents were to become strictly a matter of legal definition.

The Comptroller and Auditor General told the Committee that his report on the accounts must include a statement that he obtained all the information and explanations that he required. He considered that he must be the judge of what papers or information he needed and that this had been accepted generally by the Departments for over 40 years. His practice was to get the background information from departmental papers so that he could judge whether there were grounds for an audit query which would put the Accounting Officer on notice that a particular matter might be reported to Dáil Éireann. He could scarcely be interested in police files or matters of that kind but, if such files were referred to in the accounts submitted to him, he might ask to see them. The production of papers is a fundamental business as far as audit in any context is concerned and the Comptroller and Auditor General felt that he could not properly discharge the duties imposed on him by the Constitution if the Accounting Officers were permitted to withhold papers requested in the course of audit or to carefully select papers to be shown to the Auditor.

In the course of its deliberations the Committee learned that the British Committee of Public Accounts many years ago felt that no Department should have a right to refuse information, even though of a highly confidential character, to the Comptroller and Auditor General if he requires it to discharge his duties. It was also told that there had been no previous difficulty that had not been surmounted in getting papers from the Accounting Office of the Department of Justice or, indeed, from other Departments.

One appreciates that the Department of Justice must be careful and that, in the nature of things, security must impose its own rules. But the Comptroller and Auditor General is in a special position holding a quasi-judicial Office, one of the organs of the Constitution which is thoroughly safeguarded in the public interest. If it is found that under existing law he may be delayed or obstructed in obtaining all the documents or papers he judges to be necessary then the law relied upon — which is 101 years old — should be revised and brought into line with modern thinking. Although I have learned that in England the Audit Office do not remember a case where even secret documents were withheld so long as to bring the Comptroller and Auditor General to complain to the House of Commons, Dáil Éireann is now faced with this delicate problem.

I understand that the position of the auditor in private practice is thoroughly safeguarded by the Companies Act, 1963, and that he could be found guilty of negligence if he failed to obtain documents necessary for the completion of his audit.

More appropriately, however, I looked up legislation enacted by this House in 1941. I refer to the Local Government Act, 1941, Section 86, which provides, inter alia, that a Local Government Auditor may, by giving notice in writing to any person, require such person to attend before him to give evidence — on oath if necessary — or to produce any books, deeds, contracts, accounts, vouchers, maps, plans, or other documents in his custody or control. There is a penalty for failure in this respect. It would seem that the Comptroller and Auditor General should be placed in a not inferior position to that of the Local Government Auditor.

I was also able to check on the position in the United States of America. I found that the Budget and Accounting Act, 1921, provides that all departments and establishments shall furnish to the Comptroller such information regarding the powers, duties, activities, organisation, financial transactions and methods of business of their respective offices as he may from time to time require of them; and the Comptroller General, or any of his assistants or employees when duly authorised by him, shall for the purpose of securing such information, have access to and the right to examine any books, documents, papers or records of such department or establishment. This Act also contains provision for the Comptroller General to make recommendations looking for greater economy or efficiency in public expenditure.

It is clear to me that this House should not even be suspected of encouraging any Minister or civil servant to withhold papers which the Comptroller and Auditor General wishes to see. Indeed, he should be commended for interpreting his task more widely so as to cover the administrative processes involved in the collection and spending of public moneys. But, at the moment, his rights have been challenged on an interpretation of the law, and the position must be put in order by this House.

I made some inquiries to find out what the position was in this regard in other countries, as I felt the matter was of such extreme importance. A questionnaire issued in 1963 by the Permanent International Secretariat in Vienna of Supreme Audit Institutions to member countries requesting information on the legal basis and organisation of Supreme State Audit Institutions included the following questions:

1. Has the Institution the right of perusal of all the documents it may choose to request (not only vouchers, but also records, correspondence, contracts, etc.)?

2. Are the auditing officials empowered to demand all the verbal information they deem necessary?

3. As regards the powers of control as covered by questions 1 and 2 are there any restrictions imposed on the Institution in respect of supreme government organs (head of State, members of government, etc.)?

With the exceptions mentioned below all the replies received were affirmative in the case of questions 1 and 2 and negative in the case of 3.

In Germany the reply to question 1 indicated that the personal ministerial papers of a Federal Minister could be made available to the State Audit Institution only with the Minister's agreement, but otherwise there was no limitation to the Institution's right to peruse documents.

The replies to question 3 indicated that in Belgium and Holland Royal Family papers were excepted; in France special ministerial and Parliamentary funds were excepted but were audited by a special commission on which the Audit Institution was represented; in Germany Budget legislation permits specified individual items to be withdrawn from the Audit Institution as in the case of grants in aid in Ireland; in Sweden papers of the Cabinet are not subject to scrutiny.

Among the 68 countries who replied to these three questions were Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Holland, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, Yugoslavia, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland and Venezuela.

Article 15, subsection (10), page 38 of the Constitution states that each House of the Oireachtas shall make its own rules and Standing Orders. Standing Order 127 which gives statutory authority to the Public Accounts Committee reads:

There shall be a Select Committee to be designated the Committee of Public Accounts for the examination of the accounts showing the appropriation of the sums operated by Parliament to meet the public expenditure and of such other accounts laid before Parliament as the Committee may think fit... The Committee shall have power to send for persons, papers and records and to report from time to time.

The Public Accounts Committee takes evidence from Accounting Officers of each Department, usually the Secretary of a Department but not necessarily, and publishes an annual report with minutes of evidence incorporating a minute from the Minister for Finance on the Report. The Committee depends largely on the Comptroller and Auditor General who, as well as presenting his own Annual Report, furnishes the Committee with information based on his audit and sits in and contributes to the examination of each witness or Accounting Officer. Therefore, if the Comptroller and Auditor General is unable to conduct a satisfactory audit, the function of the Public Accounts Committee is gravely impaired.

I would finally direct your attention to page 21 of the Interim Report and I quote from the last paragraph of Mr. Suttle's statement to the Committee:

In my work in the auditing of accounts, I will look for papers which I consider are relevant to the accounts, which are the only papers I am interested in, and if I do look for such files, I must insist on obtaining them. In this particular case, I did not know what the files dealt with. All I had was the vouchers which referred to these particular files. If it was left to accounting officers to decide what papers I should see or what papers I should not see, I could not certify the account as correct because I would not be sure until I had seen the papers I asked for whether I had obtained all the information and explanations that I required; but on the basis of looking for every document I would not like to put a limit on what I was looking for because every action of the State has financial repercussions somewhere, and I feel that once I ask for a paper, I must see it, as has been the custom for years in every other Department. If some papers are highly confidential, it has generally been the practice of the accounting officer to get into direct touch with the Comptroller and Auditor General, explain the position to him and then invite him across to see them, no matter how confidential they are. But it is he himself who will see them, and then having satisfied himself whether things are correct or not, he will notify his staff: "I have seen that file: you need not look for it further." That has been the custom for years.

It was in view of that position that the Committee of Public Accounts, having taken all the necessary evidence and having discussed the matter in detail, asked the House to consider the following:

(1) That the proper discharge of the duty placed on the Comptroller and Auditor General by Article 33 of the Constitution, viz. to audit all accounts of moneys administered by or under the authority of the Oireachtas, requires that such documents as he determines to be necessary for the carrying out of this duty should be made available to him by Accounting Officers and

(2) that as the statutory position in relation to the making available of documents is not satisfactory legislation to give effect to (1) should be enacted.

Mr. Molloy

At the outset I wish to make quite clear that I do not want to add to or decrease anything already published in the Interim Report which has dealt with this matter at great length, but as a member of the Public Accounts Committee I feel very strongly an obligation to get up here and explain the stand we have taken on this matter. The files in question are of very little importance. I think there may have been an impression created through newspaper reports that some big scandal was being covered up. As a matter of fact, the items referred to involve very small expenditure and are of no importance so far as the running of the State is concerned. But what we are concerned about is the principle involved and the fact that certain papers were withheld from the Comptroller and Auditor General.

We, as members of this privileged Committee, look upon ourselves as watchdogs for the public and the Comptroller and Auditor General, upon whom we rely greatly for our information, is a man whose position is set down in the Constitution. As already stated by Deputy Hogan, the functions which he has to perform are clearly stated in Article 33: "to audit all accounts of moneys administered by or under authority of the Oireachtas."

We were amazed, when this matter arose, to find that the Accounting Officer of the Department of Justice was withholding certain files from the Comptroller and Auditor General and we went into the matter as thoroughly as we could. We had to arrive at the conclusion that it was not stated emphatically and clearly whether or not the Comptroller and Auditor General was right or whether Mr. Berry was right. We felt we were forced into the position where we would have to bring the matter before the Dáil and have the Dáil decide. While requesting that legislation should be introduced, I would be satisfied if the position was clearly stated — a policy statement made as to what should happen in the circumstances.

The principle of making files available to the Comptroller and Auditor General is something which has existed for 40 years and, I think, there has been a breach of this principle on only one previous occasion and on that occasion the matter was brought before the Dáil and legislation was introduced. There is no legal entitlement but the principle is good.

As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I should like to say briefly that, if the position is clarified to my satisfaction, I shall not press for legislation and I do not believe any of the other members will press for it either. However, we want this matter cleared up. The Comptroller and Auditor General has been placed in a most awkward position and we feel that we could not carry out our duties if papers were to be withheld.

The Comptroller and Auditor General, being appointed under the Constitution and receiving his appointment from the President, is a most trustworthy person and a person who is surely entitled to see any file in any State Department. We know that he only requested files that related to accounts. My personal view is that, if there are people in the Department who can see these files, surely the Comptroller and Auditor General should be allowed to see them? At no time was it requested that the members of the Committee should see these files. We do not wish to see them; we are quite satisfied if we can have the information from the Comptroller and Auditor General, on whom we rely for most of our information, that he has seen them and that he is satisfied with what he has seen.

If any file is deemed to be of a confidential nature from the point of view of the safety of the State, for instance, surely the accounting officer in the Department could request the Comptroller and Auditor General to come to the Department and see the file personally so that the file would not be seen by any junior official in the Department. It is astounding that this file has actually been refused. It is quite clear that the two men involved are men of great integrity and I believe that they would both be very happy to have the Dáil resolve this matter for them. I am under no illusion as regards Mr. Berry. He feels he has done the right thing and, within the law, he has.

We, on the Committee, feel that we cannot continue to do our duty to the public until there is a clear statement as to the availability of all papers to the Comptroller and Auditor General. I hope the Dáil will be able to settle this matter without having to introduce legislation. If we were to start defining limits, maybe we would place greater restrictions on ourselves in the long run. As the principle was adhered to down through the years it can continue to be adhered to, but I am not satisfied that it was adhered to on this occasion.

Mr. Treacy

As a member of the Public Accounts Committee for a number of years, I must say that it was a matter of great concern to us when this problem arose concerning the refusal of the head of a Department to make certain information available to the Comptroller and Auditor General. This affects the integrity of the Comptroller and Auditor General and his function, duties and responsibilities but it also undermines very much the authority of the Public Accounts Committee and the traditional duties which this Committee has performed in the past.

I strongly support the proposal that this House makes clear that the Comptroller and Auditor General is entitled to call for all documents, files and evidence of all kinds which he regards as essential for the proper auditing of accounts. It has been proved to be true in most countries that the Comptroller and Auditor General should have access to all documents and it is disturbing in the extreme that the Secretary of any State Department should have the audacity to refuse what the Comptroller and Auditor General considers as essential information to assist him in compiling his accounts.

It is disturbing, also, to learn that the Minister in charge of that Department at the time was unable or unwilling to make the civil servant concerned co-operate in the traditional way. This gives rise to the belief which is abroad in this country that vast power and control are vested in the hands of certain civil servants and that even Ministers, the Taoiseach or the Government, for that matter, seem to be unable to grapple effectively with it. It would seem that they have lost control to these higher civil servants.

It is for this reason, also, that the House must make clear the right of the Comptroller and Auditor General to information of this kind and that no civil servant shall have the right to impede or frustrate an official of the standing of the Comptroller and Auditor General in the pursuit of what he considers to be his duty to the State.

We on the Public Accounts Committee are proud of the part we are playing as watchdogs for the people and for this House in particular. It is only fitting that we can claim whatever information we require. Each year the responsible chiefs of every Department unhesitatingly make available to us and to the Comptroller and Auditor General all relevant information required for the purpose of our business. I believe this is the first occasion on which we have been refused information. The information sought on this occasion was not such that it would set the country on fire or endanger our security. It had to do with the routine expenses of the Department of Justice such as expenditure on supplies of medicines, expenses of court witnesses and also, I think, had to do with an efficiency report concerning administration.

It was felt, at the beginning, that the Secretary of the Department, Mr. Berry might have acted in a huff but the situation grew into one of obstinacy which could not be resolved, despite all the endeavours which went on behind the scenes and despite appeals to the Minister for Education who was Minister for Justice at that time. I am sure the present Minister for Justice, too, has also been involved and the Taoiseach himself must know of this. However, all these important representatives of our people have been unable to resolve this difficulty between this particular chief of the Department of Justice, Mr. Berry, and the Comptroller and Auditor General. It is regrettable that the matter should have to come to this House. However, it is here now and I hope the House and the Government will make clear that it is a fundamental right of the Comptroller and Auditor General to have access to all relevant information.

The Comptroller and Auditor General is a man who secures his prerogatives through our Constitution and through legislation of this House. He is a man who can surely be trusted. I am sure he and his predecessors have seen far more confidential files in other Departments down through the years than the files which are the subject of our deliberations on this occasion. If confidence is to be restored in respect of the Committee of Public Accounts — indeed in respect of the whole matter of the functions of the Comptroller and Auditor General and his fundamental right to investigate in depth and in detail, according to his wishes all files in any Department — this is something which must be made clear in this House. Otherwise, the position of the Comptroller and Auditor General would be made untenable. There would be an obvious breakdown of confidence in respect of the membership of the Committee of Public Accounts. The public at large are likely to lose confidence in the whole method of supervision in respect of the expenditure of State Departments.

The Committee of Public Accounts, comprising members of the Government Party, the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party, are, I believe, unanimous in their full and sustained support for the claims of the Comptroller and Auditor General in this matter. It is a cause of much concern to us that any one man, any one civil servant, however important he may feel, could frustrate this traditional procedure which we have pursued here in respect of the Committee of Public Accounts.

Deputy P. Hogan of South Tipperary, our Chairman, has given us very excellent information here today. He demonstrated that what has been asked on this occasion is something that is granted in most democracies we know of, certainly in Britain and very many other countries. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle himself, Deputy Jones, was the honoured Chairman of our Committee for a number of years. I do not want to involve him in this debate at present but he, too, participated in and contributed greatly to the work and the worth of that Committee down the years. It would be a great tragedy if anything were to be done now, in a fit of pique, obstinacy or unbridled opposition, which would undo the great work of the Committee of Public Accounts down the years.

This is as much as I want to say on this matter. Let me express the hope that we can be given the assurance we desire, the assurances we deem to be a prerequisite to the proper functioning of the Committee of Public Accounts in the future, as in the past, and to ensure the integrity and the ability of our Comptroller and Auditor General to pursue his work in accordance with his lights and his responsibilities to this House and to the public at large. I appreciate that Mr. Berry is standing on what he calls a matter of principle. There is also a greater matter of principle, as far as Mr. Suttle and ourselves on the Public Accounts Committee are concerned. It is that, in respect of the Committee of Public Accounts, there shall be unhindered access to all State Departments and that, in respect of this matter, justice shall not merely be done but shall in fact be seen to be done in the clear light of day. It is vitally important that the lack of confidence or the unrest which has given rise to this matter be set aside and that the Committee get down to functioning, as it did in the past, and that it not be hindered in its work by a refusal to give reasonable assistance to the Comptroller and Auditor General in the pursuit of his duties.

Mr. Dillon

I believe I have the qualification of having presided over this Committee for a greater number of years than any other Deputy in Dáil Éireann since the State was founded. Deputy Patrick Hogan, the present Chairman, has laid the facts of the situation before the House with absolute clarity. I think Deputy Treacy makes a mistake in believing that there is any kind of personal conflict between the Accounting Officer of the Department of Justice and the Comptroller and Auditor General. I believe this is simply a situation in which a highly conscientious Accounting Officer felt it was his duty to act on his interpretation of the obligations placed upon him by the Standing Orders of this House and the law, and found that the traditional interpretation put upon the same document by the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General is at variance as between both parties. The Accounting Officer and the Comptroller and Auditor General stood for their respective principles which is what brings this matter to this House.

It is important to emphasise two points — (1) the unanimous report of the Committee, representative of all Parties in this House, and (2) the subject matter on the files in question is trivial in the extreme. However, out of the question of these files arises the matter of principle which the House must now itself resolve. This is our duty. The function of this Committee is to represent not the Government but the Oireachtas. It has a duty to ensure that the authorisations the Oireachtas have provided to the Executive, either through legislation or Financial Resolution, have been carried out in accordance with the intention of the Resolution or the legislation adopted by this House.

It is important to remember that neither the Comptroller and Auditor General nor the Committee of Public Accounts have anything to do with politics. It is one of the perennial occupations of the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, for the first month or so of every new Committee, to keep reminding novice members of the Committee, who want to raise questions of policy at meetings of the Committee of Public Accounts, that that is quite outside the scope of the authority of the Committee. Their only responsibility is to determine whether public money has been spent in accordance with the will of this House. If it appears that the Executive, that is, the Government, have been trying to spend money other than in accordance with the will of this House, it is the duty of the Comptroller and Auditor General to report to the Committee and of the Committee, having heard all the evidence, if it accepts that view, to report back to Dáil Éireann and to impose on the Executive, that is, the Government, the necessity to introduce a Supplementary Estimate in order to get retroactive authority from this House for any expenditure they may improperly or inadvertently have entered upon without prior authority by Resolution or legislation of Dáil Éireann.

Now, I cannot improve on the statement of the case made by Deputy P. Hogan. If there is anyone who wants to study it in detail I refer that person to his statement. I have tried to simplify this matter into two issues and I do that now qualified by the warning that anyone who wants to study this matter closely should peruse every line of what Deputy Hogan has said. Subject to that reservation, two points of principle appear to me to emerge and call for resolution. One is the question: ought the Comptroller and Auditor General have access to any file he requires for his audit or is there any limitation? My answer to that is that the Comptroller and Auditor General is an officer of the Constitution. There is no officer of State who holds a more responsible or confidential post. If there is anything contained in a Government file which is accessible to the eyes of anyone in the public service, it should be accessible to the eyes of the Comptroller and Auditor General.

Deputy Molloy is right and I agree with him when he says that when we say the file should be available to the Comptroller and Auditor General we speak advisedly because I can well imagine a situation arising in which it would be proper to say: "This file is accessible to the Comptroller and Auditor General but only such parts of it as are relevant to the accounting problem he is called upon to deal with for publication in the records of the Committee of Public Accounts." There could exist a file part of which was highly confidential and not fit for general publication but part of which should, on the net question as to whether public money had been spent within what we call in the technical language of the Committee come "within the ambit of the vote".

Therefore, I advise the House to place on record beyond yea or nay for the guidance of every Accounting Officer, particularly those who have conscientious scruples which are admirable in a public servant, and as evinced by the Accounting Officer of the Department of Justice in this particular case, a clear indication that Dáil Éireann wishes the Comptroller and Auditor General to have available to him every file, whatever its character, but recognising that it is not unreasonable for an Accounting Officer where a file contains confidential material to direct the attention of the Comptroller and Auditor General that those parts of that file remain confidential and should not be communicated to anybody else even the junior members of the staff of his own audit office.

Now the second point of principle that I see arising in this matter is how correctly to interpret the words "within the ambit of the Vote". Here we have available to us a useful guide. It is true that if we are driven back to the Act of 1866 for a definition of the words we would find the language in practice over 100 years ago inappropriate to the problems with which Dáil Éireann, the Executive and the Department of Finance have to deal perennially at present. Therefore, we must ask ourselves in the context of the present time what the words "within the ambit of the Vote" imply. There is well known to the common law and to Statute law the doctrine of exclusion and that provides that if when enacting a Statute in this House we specifically exclude certain matters from the ambit of the Act we are deemed to include all relevant matters other than those we have categorically excluded. Now, there is a means not uncommonly employed by this House whereby we withdraw from the supervision of the Comptroller and Auditor General the detailed examination of certain moneys that we vote and that is the device of the grant-in-aid. Where a sum of money is declared to be a grant-in-aid the Accounting Officer can clear his record with the Comptroller and Auditor General and with the Committee of Public Accounts by simply producing the certificate of the grantee that he has received the money. That is the only obligation that devolves upon the Accounting Officer and beyond that evidence of payment of the grant-in-aid neither the Comptroller and Auditor General nor the Committee of Public Accounts can pursue their inquiries.

But I think it is reasonable, since we made that perfectly clear by the terms habitually employed in authorising a grant-in-aid, that it should be reasonably clear, and if it is not we should now make it perfectly clear, that the words "within the ambit of the Vote" cover not only the duty of the Comptroller and Auditor General to examine whether the public money has been laid out by the Executive in accordance with the letter of our resolution or Statute, but that the money has been effectively laid out. Here I think is the root and branch of this difference of opinion.

Let me recall that there is no obligation on the Comptroller and Auditor General to satisfy himself that the grant-in-aid has been effectively expended by the grantee. The Oireachtas decides that in the special circumstances the grantee gets the money for the purposes it thinks it proper to give it, and it is no part of the Comptroller and Auditor General's responsibility to see that it has been effectively expended. We have determined in the Oireachtas to leave that to the discretion of the grantee but we use the form of the grant in aid and we never give the Executive a grant in aid. Any money made available to the Executive or to any administrative Department is hedged round with the presumption that it is not only expended but expended effectively.

I can give two cases in point which I recall from my recollection of hundreds of cases that came before the Committee while I presided over it. We were continually considering the position when a Department of State was authorised to carry out public works of one kind or another, erect buildings, equip offices, do any kind of public work and, on occasion, we would come up against a case in which a Department determined that work should not be put out to tender but that there should be a contract based on time and material, plus a percentage. It was commonly the duty of the Comptroller and Auditor General to query that practice and to ask why, in that particular case, there had been a departure from the usual procedure of accepting the lowest tender. If the Committee thought the reasons for the departure inadequate then, in their annual report, they would comment upon it, perhaps, unfavourably and, when the Minister for Finance made his rejoinders to the report of the Committee, he might share the Committee's disapproval of the particular course of action or he might say that, in the special circumstances, he had given express sanction to this departure from the normal and the Committee could reconsider that in the course of its deliberations in the ensuing year. That is an example of the kind of case which occurs practically every year, the kind of case in which the efficacy by which moneys appropriated have been spent is investigated by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

I can give the House another rather entertaining incident in which this necessity became abundantly and manifestly necessary. I remember, when I was Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, the Comptroller and Auditor General said he had come across an unusual account in a part of the country, which, for the purpose of our debate here today shall be nameless, and he had discovered that a Department of State, which also shall be nameless for the moment, had paid grants appropriate to the building of two houses and, in the course of his investigations, the Comptroller and Auditor General had discovered that the two houses were built en pair in rural Ireland and the fact that semidetached houses had been built in rural Ireland in the middle of a rural area caused him some concern and put him upon his inquiry.

On inquiry being made, he discovered that, in one of the houses, there was a kitchen, a livingroom and one bedroom and, in the other, there were two bedrooms and a diningroom, a lavatory and a bathroom. In one house there was a staircase; in the other there was none. There was a manifest space left for an aperture through which a door could conveniently be made after the grants had been paid. I do not know whether the responsible Department went back and inspected the semidetached houses after attention had been directed to their odd construction by the Comptroller and Auditor General. I do not even know whether we ever succeeded in frustrating the ingenious device employed by the builder of the pair of houses, but it was abundantly clear to us that the gentleman who had built the pair of houses had got two grants for one house and, piling Pelion on Ossa, it became abundantly clear to us that he had got two grants for one house that did not qualify for any grant at all because its area was too big to qualify. He simply split it down the middle, got a grant for two and was riding high, wide and handsome.

The fact that the Comptroller and Auditor General thought it right to investigate how moneys provided for grants were being used proved abundantly, I think, that it has been well established practice for the Comptroller and Auditor General to interpret the words "within the ambit of the Vote" to mean not only the money spent in accordance with the letter of our resolutions and legislation but that such money is effectively spent in accordance with the mind and will of this House. And that is something we cannot too strongly emphasise.

The matter is not one of controversy between the various parties. It is a matter of determining what the House as a whole deems it is expedient to do to protect the public purse. I have no doubt whatever that the view of the Comptroller and Auditor General, as expounded by Deputy Patrick Hogan (South Tipperary), should be made to prevail, but I want to make it perfectly clear that, in so far as the Accounting Officer of the Department had a conscientious duty which he saw as a binding principle, I applaud him for standing on a point of principle. He did the right thing that he believed it was his duty to do. It is our duty when the matter comes before us in irreconcilable conflict to inform both the Comptroller and Auditor General and all Accounting Officers what we wish to see done if, by that procedure, we can avoid the possibility of any future clash in matters of this kind. I doubt if express legislation is necessary.

I am rather amazed that the Minister for Labour sheds his radiant presence upon us in the resolution of this particular problem. I rather thought it was the Taoiseach who would be involved. However, so long as the Minister for Labour speaks for the Government, that is all right.

Dr. Hillery

Conciliation.

Mr. Dillon

If the statement by the Minister clarifies the position from the point of view of the Minister for Finance, the Taoiseach and the Government I think that probably will resolve the matter satisfactorily. I would be reluctant to undertake amending legislation because our experience has taught us that, with the incomparable skills of our own Comptroller and Auditor General since the State was founded, of our own Department of Finance since the State was founded, and of our own Departments of State, we have been able to evolve skilfully the machinery of control in a way that has been satisfactory to all up to this particular point of principle. I think that is the best way if at all practicable.

I do not know whether the mover of this motion proposes legislation. I do not express any opinion as to whether legislation is desirable. On the whole, I believe that it may not be necessary. If it should be I would support it. I want to make it quite clear that in this matter I think the Comptroller and Auditor General is right and that the interpretation put upon the situation by the Accounting Officer is mistaken.

Mr. Andrews

It is important to emphasise at this point in this civilised debate that this is an all-Party motion. Agreement was reached at the Committee of Public Accounts of which I have the privilege of being a member that this motion would be put to the House. It is an all-Party agreement and it is non-controversial. There is a principle involved here. Basically it is a clash of personalities, a clash of interpretation. An officer of one Department thinks he is entitled to withhold files and the Comptroller and Auditor General thinks he is entitled to have a look at those files. The issue is as simple as that.

The Committee of Public Accounts presented a report to the House. We as members of that Committee have come to the House for a ruling. Like Deputy Dillon, I think this is not a matter for legislation but for commonsense. We hope the Minister will uphold the interim report which the Committee sent in. In a matter of this nature legislation will not be necessary. Legislation on a matter of principle can be very restrictive and inflexible. That is one problem about legislation on an issue of this kind.

To come back to the functions of the Comptroller and Auditor General, they are clearly defined in Article 33 (1) of the Constitution which states:

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.

This effectively places the Comptroller and Auditor General in the position of a judge. He cannot be removed without resolution by both Houses of the Oireachtas. In that way he is as independent as a judge. He is an exalted person in our community. In this instance we are being asked to give our opinion as to who is right and who is wrong. In my opinion the request of the Comptroller and Auditor General to the Accounting Officer was reasonable. It is conceded that the particular files are not important. The Accounting Officer says they are important as a symbol of principle.

If Mr. Berry can see this document, why in the name of all that is wonderful cannot this Constitutional personage, Mr. Suttle, see it? Is one unreliable? Is Mr. Suttle unreliable? Is there a suggestion that Mr. Berry is unreliable. They are men of integrity. Mr. Suttle would not run around telling various people what he had seen on departmental files. If Mr. Berry or any other Accounting Officer in any other Department can see the files, in my opinion the Comptroller and Auditor General can also see them. That is the basic issue here. It is important that we should get the guidance of the House on the position.

One can sympathise with a Minister or an Accounting Officer who claims privilege for a file. It is not being claimed in this instance. In fact, the whole idea of State privilege has from time to time proved somewhat of a bogeyman. There is a report of the case of Duncan versus Camell Laird. In this case the House of Lords in England decided that it was sufficient for the Minister to say that documents were privileged. That was reversed, and rightly so, in a case recently reported, the case of Conway versus Rimmer. In this case the British Home Secretary claimed privilege for a report of a superintendent on a probationer and it was held that the court could call for those papers despite the claim of the Home Secretary, and that the production of the papers would not be injurious to the public interest. Our Supreme Court in the case of O'Leary versus the Minister for Industry and Commerce reported in the 1966Irish Reports held similar to the case in England. Privilege should not be claimed except where it is required.

There is no question of privilege being required in this instance. There are no State secrets involved. There are no confidential documents involved. This brings up another issue. We must have a reasonable definition of the functions of the Comptroller and Auditor General in the case of secret documents. Is he precluded from having a look at them? It is important to bring up a number of examples as to why we are making this case for the Comptroller and Auditor General. I want to refer the House to page xi, Vote 21, of the Appropriation Accounts 1967-68. The Comptroller and Auditor General acts as a watchdog and reports to us. We are his fellow watchdogs. We are representatives of the people. We examine all these matters which come before us at the Committee of Public Accounts. We examine them as trustees for the people. I want to quote now from the Appropriation Accounts:

£1,750 was paid to a bank for lodgment to the account of the Garda Síochána Medical Aid Society and was charged to Subhead E. — Station Services. I have been furnished with Department of Finance authority for this payment but my request for the relevant file was refused and the payment has not been accounted for in detail to me. As I am required to audit all accounts of moneys administered by or under the authority of the Oireachtas, the principal exception being those cases in which Dáil Éireann expressly stipulates that expenditure of sums issued out of a grant-in-aid is not to be accounted for in detail to me, I have asked the Accounting Officer for an explanation.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Might I point out to the Deputy that the Appropriation Accounts have still to come before the Committee of Public Accounts.

Mr. Andrews

I appreciate that.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I would hope that the Deputy would not anticipate what the Committee might decide.

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins

I think the Deputy was dealing with it as symptomatic.

Mr. Andrews

I was giving it as an example. It is available to the public so there is no question of anything confidential being disclosed. It is on sale to the public for 8s 6d for their information. It is a very interesting document.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

When the Committee examine it there may be some explanation for this matter.

Mr. Andrews

I take your point and I will go off that altogether. I want to bring it to the attention of the House that this shows a breakdown in communications. There has been a suggestion that the Comptroller and Auditor General would not go to the Department of Justice to have a look at these papers. I think the general argument by the Accounting Officer in this instance is that the files at issue would get into the hands of the staff or subordinates of the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Comptroller and Auditor General has undertaken to go to the Departments to have a look at papers which the Accounting Officer considers to be of a confidential nature. I quote from the Interim Report of the Committee of Public Accounts 1966-67:

Mr. Suttle: If some papers are highly confidential it has generally been the practice of the Accounting Officer to get into direct touch with the Comptroller and Auditor General, explain the position to him, and then invite him across to see them, no matter how confidential they are. But it is he himself who will see them, and then having satisfied himself whether things are correct or not, he will notify his staff: "I have seen that file: you need not look for it further." That has been the custom for years.

This has been the custom for years and I do not see why it should not be the custom for years to come. It is a very reasonable tradition. We know that civil servants are bound by tradition but it is one of the worthier traditions and it should be continued. Other people like Deputy Dillon and Deputy Molloy, who is a member of the Committee of Public Accounts, may think it does not require legislation. It requires commonsense and the application thereof. It requires the withdrawal by certain people from positions of pride and prejudice. I do not wish to reflect on the Comptroller and Auditor General or Mr. Berry. They are men of integrity and they are not on trial. We are not indulging in public execution or, indeed, pillorying them.

The Committee of Public Accounts has sought from the Dáil the permission it now seeks. It would be my fond hope that the Minister for Labour, replying on behalf of the Government, will support the observations of the Interim Report produced by the Committee in December, 1967.

I may add that Deputy Hogan has not been too long on the Committee of Public Accounts, but in the words of my learned colleague, Deputy Burke, he is an estimable Chairman.

Minister for Labour (Dr. Hillery)

I think from the tone of what has been said by the members of the Committee that what they want is a resolution by the House of a problem which has arisen between people whom Deputy Dillon has described as conscientious officers and I may be able to help by outlining the practice.

We, the Government, since the inception of the post of Comptroller and Auditor General in 1923 have always accepted that his functions as auditor embodies not only the ordinary audit of Government accounts for accuracy and regularity but also locating and commenting on incidents of apparent waste of public funds in the implementation of Government policy and nearly every one of his annual reports on the Appropriation Accounts has drawn attention to instances of this type. The scope of the audit, therefore, has always been wider than that of the commercial auditor. He has never had the duty, nor has he ever claimed to have the duty, of examining and criticising policy decisions. The position here is that he takes policy for granted as a starting point and looks only at how economically it has been carried out.

The documents dealing with policy and with administrative matters were given to the Comptroller and Auditor General on the basis that they were required not for examination of policy aspects but rather to obtain background information, or to enable him to satisfy himself that there was no waste of public funds in carrying out the policy, or that the authority necessary had been obtained. It has always been understood that if the Comptroller and Auditor General should ask for a paper which was of such a secret nature that the Minister concerned considered that the disclosure of the information it contained to the Comptroller and Auditor General would not be in the public interest the circumstances would be explained to the Comptroller and Auditor General and efforts made to find other ways of satisfying him. If not satisfied he could discharge his obligations by reporting the matter to the Dáil. The circumstances in which the Department of Justice in the course of the year refused the Comptroller and Auditor General access to three of what have been described as relatively unimportant files are described in the minutes of evidence circulated with the report by the Committee of Public Accounts which we are discussing. The report on the 1967-8 Appropriation Accounts which has just been issued showed that a further seven files have since been withheld. The Government have considered the whole matter fully and have decided that papers and files should continue to be made available to the Comptroller and Auditor General in accordance with the practice that has prevailed here for the past 40 years.

Mr. Treacy

Hear, hear.

Dr. Hillery

This practice, as Members of the House pointed out, has operated under existing legislation and there is no reason to change the legislation because there is no reason why the practice should not continue under the existing legislation. It is, of course, not necessary to predict whether or not it will be necessary sometime in the future for a Minister to refuse papers to the Comptroller and Auditor General which he asked for, but should this prove to be the case the Comptroller and Auditor General can report the matter to the Dáil. It is my opinion that the Government believe that serious cases causing difficulty could be settled if it were explained by the Accounting Officer personally to the Comptroller and Auditor General that particular files were of an exceptionally secret nature and, further, if the files in question were made available or shown personally to the Comptroller and Auditor General in confidence. I believe that is what the Government are thinking. I think it should be the solution to the problem.

The public service is a very large and complicated organisation and notwithstanding a very high degree of zeal and competence on the part of public servants it would be remarkable and, I suppose, miraculous if mistakes were never made or if wasteful procedures did not creep in from time to time. The various Departments, and, perhaps, in particular the Department of Finance, are constantly attempting to improve efficiency and to eliminate waste. The Comptroller and Auditor General is in a very favourable position to uncover examples of waste which have not been observed by the Departments themselves and the Government welcome and appreciate the increased activity in this direction which the Comptroller and Auditor General mentions in his 1966-67 report. As I say, I do not think there is need for legislation. I think conscientious people needed guidance and I hope this statement of Government thinking will resolve the situation.

Mr. P.J. Burke

In view of the statement made by the Minister, I do not think there is very much more that we have to say but, as a member of the Committee of Public Accounts I want, first, to compliment our chairman on the way he presented his case here today. I feel the same as the Minister feels about it. There is a misunderstanding or clash of personalities here. I expressed a personal view, of course, at the Committee of Public Accounts. My view was that the Department of Justice is responsible for law and order in this country; that it is responsible for seeing that we as a democratic institution should survive; is responsible for getting secret information and various other things; is responsible for the wellbeing of every citizen. It is for all those reasons that we have a Department of Justice.

While I have no axe to grind one way or the other, I, as a member of the Committee of Public Accounts, must pay special tribute to Mr. Suttle, a most impartial, conscientious officer. He has done his job well and so have all the members of the committee. They have taken their work very seriously. The chairman, as I have already stated, is a kindly, gracious fellow and very helpful to all of us.

Having said that, I feel, as the Minister has stated here, that this is a storm in a teacup, because it has now been explained to me that Mr. Suttle, the Comptroller and Auditor General, could see this file privately and report to his officers. At first, of course, when I did not know that was the position, I suggested that the Accounting Officer was right in doing what he had done but now that it has been further explained, now that I have the explanation given by the Minister, I feel that there is no need to pursue the case any further. I would just repeat that I believe that both of the people concerned are very honourable men. I believe that there must be some misrepresentation outside about it. We are here to defend. The Accounting Officer is not here to defend himself. Neither is Mr. Suttle. I feel that both are very honourable men, most conscientious men, that one man, that is, the Accounting Officer, stood on one ground and was supported by what he thought was right. On the other hand, Mr. Suttle thought he was right. Both men felt that they were right. Now that it has been explained, I feel that further legislation is not necessary, that there is enough legislation in existence to deal with this. In future, the spirit of goodwill should exist. Now that the Minister has spoken, I shall not say any more but just leave it at that.

Mr. Crowley

I shall be brief. Now that the Minister has spoken and made the view of the Government known to the House, I do not think there is very much else to say. I should just like to add that, in my opinion the Accounting Officer has been the victim of some very bad publicity both in the press and elsewhere over the past couple of months. He took a decision and he stood by it and his Minister backed him in this decision. The chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, Deputy Hogan, initially read out the statement by Mr. Whitaker to the effect that it was the function of the Comptroller and Auditor General to go into Departments and investigate and to ensure that there is no inefficiency. Then, Mr. Whitaker came out at the end of this report, on page 26, and said that since the Comptroller and Auditor General is not concerned with policy decisions or how they are arrived at, such papers do not come within his purview and need not be produced to him.

There is the Secretary of the Department of Finance making what I consider to be two contradictory statements about the functions of the Comptroller and Auditor General. It was very necessary that we in this House should have clarified what the Comptroller and Auditor General is entitled to get when he puts his request to the various Departments and we on the Committee of Public Accounts felt that he should have all reasonable access to all matters dealing with any type of financial expenditure.

We know, of course, that there is a large staff in the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, something in the region of 53 people. Obviously, every one of those members of the staff could not have access to all the confidential files that there may be in the various Departments but we felt that the Comptroller and Auditor General himself should, if necessary, have access to these files in order to be able to clear the audit. The Minister has clarified the position. We had two men standing on their principles, both of them believing themselves to be right. I think the situation has now been righted.

Unfortunately, Mr. Berry has got some very bad publicity out of it and I do not think that any one of us in the Committee of Public Accounts agrees with this type of publicity that has gone on against Mr. Berry. We feel that he is an Accounting Officer or Secretary of a Department in the highest traditions of the Civil Service and that he was only doing what he considered was his job. It was an unpopular decision to have to take and my information is that he had the backing of several other Secretaries of Departments in the stand that he did take. It is a very good thing that the matter did come before the Dáil and that it was clarified in the way it was clarified today.

In conclusion, I should like to compliment the chairman on the way he presented the report. It showed comprehensive research and knowledge of the systems in operation in various other countries and, broadly, it represented the view of the Committee of Public Accounts.

Mr. Briscoe

As a member of the Committee of Public Accounts, I would be remiss if I did not put in my halfpenny's worth and say that the Comptroller and Auditor General has given 40 years' service to this State and he has in that time never been refused, to my knowledge, any file. This is the first time that he was refused a file. His opposite number in the United States, during the making of the atomic bomb, which was highly secret, was allowed facilities to examine the cost of the various materials that went to the making of that bomb. If he could be allowed to have these facilities I do not think there is anything so secret in our society that the Comptroller and Auditor General should be refused. Also, if we were to condone the concealing of documents in a policy file it would be a very useful way of stopping the Comptroller and Auditor General from tracing the origin of certain expenditures. If he opens a file and sees the reference: "See Folio 44" and Folio 44 is a secret file, then he must be allowed to have that file, in my opinion, and this is the judgment of the Committee of Public Accounts and this is the judgment, certainly, of the Dáil here. We hope a situation like this will not arise again.

I am quite satisfied that the Comptroller and Auditor General is not under any misapprenhension as to what his duties are. He has been working at them long enough. If junior clerks in the Department of Justice have access to files, I see no reason why the Comptroller and Auditor General should not have access to the same files.

As others have said, this should never have arisen. However, it is good that it has arisen because it gives the public an opportunity of seeing that all expenditure in all Departments is accounted for by an independent section, if you like, of the Civil Service. I make no apology for standing up in support of the action that is being taken. It would be unfortunate if we had to introduce legislation to deal with this matter when it is not necessary. This is the first time in 40 years such a matter has come before the Dáil and this is the best way of dealing with it.

Mr. T.J. Fitzpatrick

(Cavan): I have very little to say but I should like to compliment the Committee of Public Accounts on having brought this matter before Dáil Éireann. I join with the views expressed by Deputy Briscoe when he said it is proper that this matter should have been brought before the Dáil. I would not have risen at all were it not for the fact that some of the speakers this afternoon appeared to be apologising on behalf of the Committee for bringing this before Dáil Éireann. I do not think any such apology is necessary.

The facts here are very simple. The Comptroller and Auditor General, in discharge of his duties, considered it was necessary for him to inspect some files and he asked for those files. The Secretary of the Department considered that he was entitled to withhold the files because they contained matters which he thought should be treated as strictly secret. It is a question of deciding in principle which of these two officials or officers is correct. There can be no doubt that the Comptroller and Auditor General is correct or, as emerged from the debate, that the files in question are relatively unimportant — they deal with matters involving only a few pounds in value.

As far as I am concerned, and I hope in so far as the Committee are concerned, it is entirely irrelevant whether there was five shillings or £1 million at stake. The principle is what matters. If an Accounting Officer is entitled to withhold from the Comptroller and Auditor General a file dealing with expenditure of £5, equally he is entitled to withhold a file dealing with thousands or even millions of pounds. If by bringing this motion before the House we have established that the House is satisfied the Comptroller and Auditor General is entitled to have access to such files as he considers necessary to enable him to discharge his public duty, we have done a good day's work.

From listening to the debate, particularly what the Minister for Labour had to say, I understand the Government are of the opinion that there could be, and indeed are, certain files which should not be made available to what might be described as an ordinary clerk in the ordinary way, but that these files should be and must be made available to the constitutional officer, who is the Comptroller and Auditor General, if he requires them. I accept that as being completely adequate. I understand from the Minister's speech that the Comptroller and Auditor General may say: "I personally must see this file," and then he initials a memorandum to his staff stating: "I am satisfied, and you need not pursue that file further." That is a reasonable approach, an adequate approach.

However, I should not like the debate to conclude without making it perfectly clear that, as far as I am concerned, there is no apology due to anybody for bringing this into the open, into the House, and making it clear beyond yea or nay, not only to the particular officer who happens to be involved but to all heads of Departments now and in the future, that the Comptroller and Auditor General is a constitutional officer with constitutional duties and that in order to discharge these duties he is entitled to have access to any file he wants.

Major de Valera

In rising after all the other speakers, I am conscious of the fact that much or all of what can be said on this motion has been said. I think it is no harm, however, to draw attention to the fact that this House is, as far as I can see, unanimous in its considered opinion. We have here a case of Parliament functioning at its best, carrying its responsibility in a considered and dignified way and we should not allow this occasion to pass without adverting to the fact that, if in the future any such question affecting a very fundamental principle should arise, this unanimous, considered and responsible attitude of the House today will be on record and will be a precedent for all following Dála, because we are here asserting the fundamental principle of democracy — the supremacy of Parliament.

From one point of view, it is better that conflicts like this should be avoided — there are always disadvantages in having them aired widely, so to speak — but on this occasion the situation is productive of a great deal of good. It is good that at this time this question should have been raised and that it should be resolved; but I hope never again will there be any reason for resolving it because, fundamentally, no matter how you look at it, the issue being raised in this matter is not merely whether somebody could see a file, not whether moneys were being misappropriated, not whether there was a danger that somebody was getting away with anything, not that police security was involved, but what is to be the effective controlling body in the State. Is it to be the representative Parliament of the country or an executive arm of the administration? It raises, in other words, the fundamental question of democracy and bureaucracy.

It is for that reason that in principle this matter is of such supreme importance, because the control by Parliament of the expenditure of moneys, which is a large part of Parliamentary control in its function in the State, depends on the ability of Parliament to follow up and to have accounted for expenditure and the administration of the moneys involved. We seek to be effective. A democratic Parliament is effective through two committees, or to put it another way, through two constitutional instruments. Democracy is made possible and it functions as a whole through a committee of Parliament, that committee being nothing more nor less than the Government. We function through the Government, though we sometimes in our Party controversies tend to forget that the Government are not merely representative of one Party or group of Parties but a committee of this House as Parliament as a whole. The effectiveness of the House depends on the Government and the Government, of course, depend on the House.

The other constitutional agency is the Comptroller and Auditor General who, as far as the House is concerned, functions through a committee of the House, the Committee of Public Accounts. Between these two agencies Parliament has control of the permanent administration; and if there is any erosion of that democratic control then the permanent administration will ultimately find themselves independent of Parliament or independent of the people. Any responsible member of the administration; any responsible member of the Government or of the House or of the public will agree that trends in that direction are not to be encouraged.

I should like to say, despite what Deputy Crowley said, that since there has been reference to the Department of Finance in this debate I think that Department appreciate the realities of the situation and that their outlook is proper. The importance of this motion is that it has raised the issue about which I have spoken, in a sense, the issue of the sovereignty of Parliament and, therefore, it has raised in a sense the issue of the validity of the whole Constitution. That may seem a dramatic and over-statement of the issue but, fundamentally, that is the reason why we are considering it in this way here today.

I do not want to enlarge at length on the desirability, nor do I need to, of Parliament maintaining its powers and of the Constitutional functions being upheld. If I may say so without disrespect to either our institutions or any individual Members here, or to the House itself, we neither lack the powers nor the facilities, nor the wholehearted support of the administration in doing our job. If we here are deficient, I should like to say now in case it should be misunderstood, if this House have not asserted themselves, if they have left too much to the Executive, if they have not been able to discharge their duties, whether or not as individual Deputies, we might examine our own conscience. We might ask ourselves why it is of such relative infrequence that we approach matters in the way we are approaching this: from the point of view of reasoned principle and objectivity — a point of view from which, unfortunately, issues are too often not approached.

I say that, conscious of the beam in my own eye before I start thinking of the mote in my brother's eye. I do not want it to be taken amiss when I say that this Motion is of the greatest interest to the other side in the potential conflict, the permanent administration and particularly the people who hold permanent and most responsible posts in that administration. What appears to be at the root of this is a matter of potential concern. It is vital in the interests of the administration — and every reflecting civil servant will agree that it is vital in the interests of the civil administration — that certain balances are safeguarded and maintained in their interests.

It has been said in this debate — I forget who said it — and with great interest I heard it said that the Department of Finance welcome the activities and assistance of the Comptroller and Auditor General. Right through the history of the State this duality of control has worked happily and I hope it will continue to work. If anything like this broke down you immediately have a situation that will tend to weaken the confidence of the public in their administration. I know it is fashionable sometimes to make disparaging remarks about our Civil Service but it is well to recall that we have had a very fine instrument. As far as I can recall, never once has their integrity been called into question. They enjoy, and justly so, a high reputation and follow a fine tradition of service and integrity.

One of the things that supports, and shall I say highlights and brings out, this very desirable feature of our public administration is the very fact that there is an efficient inspecting machinery there to show it up in its true light. For more than 40 years now the joint action of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Committee of Public Accounts of this House, presided over by different Deputies from different Parties from time to time, has resulted in a picture of and a confidence in our public administration which is a very valuable asset, so valuable that I regret that we take it for granted so often.

It is far too valuable, indeed, to ever risk the situation where its value in the past might be detracted from by some venial incident now. This machinery has highlighted these fine qualities. It would be a terrible pity if in the public mind or anywhere else that image should be in any way disturbed. It would be a terrible pity if we in the House were in any way to lose that implicit confidence which we display from day to day here in accepting official information. If anything in this line were to continue or, worse still, if there should be any limitations put on the Comptroller and Auditor General beyond those that are implied in Article 33 of the Constitution, it would be extremely damaging from the point of view of public confidence both in the Parliament and in the administration. It would bring about a very undesirable situation in the Public Service itself.

This is something which one hesitates to say, because one might so easily be misunderstood, but, nevertheless, this is an opportunity on which I think it should be said. You must put yourself in the position of an executive officer, a man who is trying to get things done. These people in these Departments are hard-working men. They are not ornaments or pundits. They are the people who do the national work. A man who is doing a job wants to do it in the most direct and efficient way, as he sees it, and he only sees it from his point of view. Where you have a completely balanced community you must have some compensating instruments. For instance, why do we have to have the courts to protect the criminal against the Executive? If we had not the courts in control, how would the police function for instance? You must have balance and you must not blame a man who is trying to get a job done, if he sees it from his point of view, and, perhaps, mistakenly sees it from his point of view. This is where we come in. This is where we have our responsibility. This is where we, as elected representatives of the people, function through our principal committee, the Cabinet, to see that the balances are kept and particularly balances of a Constitutional nature such as are provided for in Article 33 of the Constitution.

I am very forcibly reminded of that by some experience I had myself as an officer in the Defence Forces during the war. I am afraid I was extremely critical of the Department of Defence or what we called the civil servants. However, in my maturer years and, having had an opportunity of looking at things more soberly, I realised how necessary and how important they were and how much they contributed to the result I wanted to get; whereas the direct methods that would have appealed to me might not have been as successful at all or might have been completely wasteful. With that experience behind me I can understand the conflict that is there. It is too much to ask of human nature that any man, or even a body of men, should be two things at the one time.

Let us face it. It is no disgrace to anybody, nor is it any reflection on anybody, that in every big organisation whether it is the management of a big company or the Civil Service of a State — and this goes for every State in the world — or any other body who have to get things done and run things, there is a temptation to paternalism. You are trying to get work done. It is very easy to decide what is good for everybody else and to go along in the perfect confidence that you know what is best for everybody. I do not say that is a state of mind that is to be criticised. It is a limitation of human nature, and I say that in the full knowledge that any of the senior people I have ever met have been remarkably balanced in regard to these things. I do not want anything I say here to be taken as an adverse criticism. What I want to emphasise is the basic necessity for a balancing mechanism here.

I compliment Deputy Hogan on his presentation of the case here today. I do not think anybody could improve on that. The clause I want to add is to point out just how deep the problem that was raised here went and how it is just as much in the interests of the administration as it is in the interests of anybody else that this thing should be resolved in a proper way. I am very jealous and I hope we are all very jealous of the exceptionally good reputation of our Public Service. But that reputation has to be safeguarded and all temptations or weaknesses that would conduce to the type of thing I have been talking about must be obviated.

I could go further but I will leave Deputies to fill in the hiatus for themselves. I could point to the dangers to our Public Service if a particular Department could acquire an autonomy and not account to anybody, because that is what it would involve. I shall leave it to Deputies themselves to think out where that could eventually lead — I do not think I should use words that could bring implications — but I do commend to all concerned that thought. We have no particular virtue of ourselves. We are merely the emissaries and the representatives of the people. But if that situation were allowed, even in the smallest way, to develop, I leave it to yourselves to see what the possible consequences could be.

In saying these things I know that responsible people in every category would at least admit that there was ground for fear. Fortunately, there is now no ground for any apprehension in this matter. The matter has been clarified. As I understand it — and it is no harm that we should have on the record a very clear understanding of the position here now — the Comptroller and Auditor General is entitled to see all files or public documents that are relevant. We will all concede that there are secret and confidential documents that must be treated as that. But when it comes to any question of secrecy or confidence I agree with those Deputies who say that if some member of the Service, or even of Parliament, has seen it then the Comptroller and Auditor General who, for all the lack of glamour attached to his office, is as much a constitutional organ as the President, the Supreme Court or the Dáil, can be trusted with that information and if he could not I think we would reach an absurd situation. The traditional solution should be sufficient. If the Accounting Officer says: "No, this is confidential", with reasonable men there should be no difficulty and the Comptroller and Auditor General himself could be restricted to a sight of the document. I think all problems are met. I cannot find, and nobody has advanced any good reason why any matter of information whatever to which the Dáil is entitled should be withheld from the Comptroller and Auditor General. I assert here and now that the Dáil, as the supreme and direct representative of the State and the people, is entitled to every bit of information in the Public Service.

Mr. L'Estrange

Hear, hear.

Major de Valera

Let there be no ambiguity about that before the Deputy says: "Hear, hear." In principle the Dáil is entitled to that but, getting down to practical facts, obviously we cannot call for every file. Under the Constitution there is the Government as the Executive and they must have their confidence and discretion in functioning as an organ of the State and, servicing that Government and this Dáil, we have the Public Service. It is obvious that a large amount of the information will be of a confidential nature that we cannot bring here to the Floor of the House, nor do we want to assert that we want to bring it before any Committee of the House. That is no practical solution. But there is, however, one practical way in which the sovereignty that I have uncompromisingly asserted, and which I think is the actual position, can be exercised and that is through the medium of this other constitutional organ, the Comptroller and Auditor General, who, as an independent, directly charged instrument can satisfy himself of the situation. He is one we can completely trust — we trust everybody else also — but I mean one we can trust in the sense of being utterly impartial and detached, and he accounts in the traditional way to our Committee of Public Accounts.

This arrangement has worked and can work and should, I think, work in the future. Therefore, it seems to me that the second part of the motion raising the question of legislation is hardly necessary. We have a very definite constitutional practice and a very definite way of ensuring that balances are maintained. I think we do not need legislation and on another ground I would be opposed to specific legislation because if we were fools enough to begin legislating specifically we would legislate ourselves into all sorts of corners and we would then be confined within the legislation. What we must do is boldly assert the principle that Oireachtas Éireann has that sovereignty of entitlement and that it is exercisable through the constitutional organ of Government and the Comptroller and Auditor General and that the Comptroller and Auditor General in the discharge of his duty is absolutely entitled to any information he seeks concerning the Public Service. If it is confidential it is not too much to ask him to deal with it personally. Nobody suggests it should go to somebody else, much less into an office. We must be reasonable and I think the Comptroller and Auditor General is being eminently reasonable in this matter. He himself, while Comptroller and Auditor General, is absolutely entitled under the Constitution, in order to make this Parliament and Government function, to the information he seeks and there can be no more question of either refusing or evading that. That is the principle the House should unequivocally affirm. There should not be any legislation. If the matter should arise again a simple, direct and curt order from this House or a curt direct ad hoc Act — and I might add axe — from this House would be the answer.

Let us not fool ourselves about legislation. It is very important that the legislation setting out the duties of Accounting Officers and so on should be considered but the whole matter of the administration of the State is far too important to be tied up in niceties of legislation like that. We are clear on what are the rights and duties of the Comptroller and Auditor General. If there are any more repercussions of anything like this it is up to the House to face the matter in the same unanimous, responsible and considered way that we have faced it today. Personally, I believe it never will be necessary but, if it should, then the ad hoc remedy should be applied forthwith. This is the only way to deal with matters of this nature.

It is unfortunate that this conflict should arise. Yet also it is a good thing in one sense. A great service has been done by bringing before the House this conflict, as I term it, between democracy and bureaucracy — because fundamentally that is what it was — in a manner in which we can dispose of it without any earthquakes or anything like that, the manner in which it comes from a Committee of the whole House where partisanship and Party politics do not bedevil the issue. I should prefer to forget any reference to personalities or accounting officers but, like Deputy Fitzpatrick. I think that, perhaps, a little bit of balance must be applied in matters of this kind. I am disturbed that any head of a Department should have looked at the situation in the way that it was looked at here.

I shall go the whole way with Deputy Dillon. I do not wish to apportion blame; it is a good principle to accept that people are trying to do their jobs in the best way they can. I would always adopt that principle until it is positively proved they are not. I think all of us in the House accept that was the case here but it is a little disturbing to find such an attitude adopted when we already had this situation with the Comptroller and Auditor General, that he could go personally and inspect the files. I could understand the Accounting Officer objecting — and I would back him — if anybody tried to say that information should be given in a routine way and would get into an office of even as few as three or four people, let alone 30 or 40 people. I would back him the whole way if he took a stand and said: "In the public interest this was not intended; you cannot bring this before just anybody."

I have not sought to go into the details of exactly what happened, but I am presuming from what was read in the report that the Comptroller and Auditor General was willing to go and inspect the file personally and to preserve all secrecy. I am very disturbed indeed that any accounting officer should have taken such an attitude. In fairness to all — I have said I have no knowledge of this particular case but Deputy Crowley has said certain things — I want to deal merely with the principle and to agree with Deputy Dillon in the approach that it is better to assume that everybody was doing everything in the best interests of the State and of his own Department. I believe that is the better way to approach it.

Again, I express a certain amount of anxiety that such an attitude should have been adopted but the waters should be let run under the bridge now. I am very happy that Dáil Éireann — it would appear unanimously — have, in a responsible way and with due consideration, faced up to a matter of extreme public importance and that they are disposing of it in the same considerate and responsible manner.

Mr. MacEntee

My approach to this matter will be different from that of my colleague.

Mr. L'Estrange

Here comes the earthquake.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy should remember that I am the only Member in this House who was in Dáil Éireann in 1918. If it were not for people like me he would not be here now so he should behave himself.

Mr. L'Estrange

If Deputy MacEntee had not missed the train, he would not be here.

Mr. MacEntee

If I missed the train, I did not miss the GPO. Did the Deputy?

Mr. L'Estrange

I was not even born then.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy should leave me alone. My name is a good Irish name. I do not know from where the Deputy got his. As I was saying, my view will be different from the views already expressed because I cannot believe that any Resolution of this House will suffice to do what it is proposed to do and in that connection perhaps we ought to ask ourselves what in fact is the position of the Comptroller and Auditor General. He is, as Deputy de Valera has reminded us, an officer appointed by this House — an officer appointed under Article 33 of the Constitution which, among other things, prescribes that there will be a Comptroller and Auditor General, who shall control all disbursements and audit all accounts of moneys administered by or under the authority of the Oireachtas. The Article further provides that the terms and conditions of this office are to be determined by law. Mark the words "by law"— not by a Resolution of this House or by a Resolution of the Committee of Public Accounts, but by law. In determining these functions by law, the law which eliminates them or defines them has to be a law which is in accordance with the Constitution.

I can claim to speak with some authority on this matter because, more than 40 years ago, I was a chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. It was in that early formative period that the functions of the Public Accounts Committee and of the Comptroller and Auditor General in relation to Ministers of State and the Accounting Officers of their several Departments were elucidated, made plain and discernible. At that time a readily perceptible distinction was drawn between audit inquiries proper, that is to say inquiries initiated and pursued for the purpose of establishing that payments had been made and expenditure incurred only as authorised by Vote in Dáil Éireann, and other inquiries, that is to say, inquiries which might encroach on the powers reserved to a Minister to settle and organise through his Accounting Officer — generally the Secretary of his Department — the activities and procedures of that Department and the administration of the services for which the Minister was responsible to Dáil Éireann.

It is important to emphasise here that for these services and for the Department which organises and administers them the Minister is responsible to the Dáil, and only to the Dáil. He is not responsible to the other House of the Oireachtas for the proper and efficient administration of the services, neither is he responsible to the Public Accounts Committee for them nor to the Comptroller and Auditor General.

In my view, when legal authority is lacking, any endeavour on the part of any statutory officer, whether he be an officer of this House or otherwise, to make any Minister or his officers responsible to him is an infringement of the constitutional position not just of the Minister but of the Dáil itself. The Minister is a member of the Government which is nominated by Dáil Éireann to administer the public affairs. The Government, by Article 28 of the Constitution, is collectively responsible to Dáil Éireann and to Dáil Éireann alone. This collectiveness of responsibility is an uninfringeable unity, something which must not be broken or violated. No one can impose on a Minister any responsibility without imposing that responsibility on the Government which is collectively responsible with him for all his official actions. To do this would be a violation of the Constitution. Under the Ministers and Secretaries Act of 1924 Ministers hold office as Heads of the Departments to which they are assigned. Section 1 of that Act under which the several Departments of State are established provides that the:

...powers, duties and functions thereof shall be assigned to and administered by the Minister hereinafter named as head thereof...

Section 2 of the same Statute provides that:

Each of the Ministers, heads of the respective Departments of State mentioned in Section 1 of this Act, shall be a corporation sole under his style or name aforesaid...

The habit has grown up in recent years of referring to the principal officer of a Department as Head of the Department. This is creating a notion in the public mind that every Department is controlled by a diarchy in which the Minister carries all the responsibility and the Secretary exercises all the power. This allegation has no basis in law and is repugnant to the Constitution. The Minister, assigned by the Taoiseach to a Department is the Head of that Department and there is no other Head.

Section 5 of the 1924 Act provides that:

Nothing in this Act contained shall derogate from the collective responsibility of the Executive Council as provided by the Constitution notwithstanding that members of the Executive Council may be appointed individually to be Ministers, heads of particular Departments of State.

Having made the position, what I regard the Constitutional position, of the Ministers clear, I should like now to consider the position and the powers of the Comptroller and Auditor General as they are at the moment determined by law. Article 33 (1) of the Constitution, as I mentioned, prescribes that there will be a Comptroller and Auditor General who shall control all disbursements and audit all accounts of moneys administered by or under the authority of the Oireachtas. The Article further provides that the terms and conditions of this office are to be determined by law. They are in fact so determined by the Comptroller and Auditor General Act of 1923. But, in this Act, they are determined mainly by reference to two British Acts.

Section 7 (3) of the Irish Act prescribes that the Comptroller and Auditor General shall perform all such duties as are prescribed by it and all relevant statutes "and"— I quote —"particularly by the Exchequer and Audit Departments Acts 1866 and 1921." Accordingly, in order to ascertain the Constitutional and statutory functions of the Comptroller and Auditor General, it is necessary to refer to these British statutes. The first of these, the Act of 1866, was introduced in the House of Commons by the great William Ewart Gladstone when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was entitled:

"An Act to consolidate the Duties of the Exchequer and Audit Departments, to regulate the Receipt, Custody and Issue of public moneys and to provide for the audit of the Accounts thereof."

Under it is prescribed, in section 27, the manner in which the examination of the Accounts shall be conducted.

Section 28 provides that "the Comptroller and Auditor General shall have free access at all convenient times to Books of Account and other documents relating to the Accounts of such Departments, and may require the several Departments concerned to furnish him from time to time, or at Regular Periods, with Accounts of the Cash Transactions of such Departments respectively up to such times or periods.”

Section 29 gives authority to the Treasury to require more detailed examinations of the Accounts.

This Act of 1866 was amended by an Act of 1921 which is also referred to in this section 7 (3) of our Comptroller and Auditor General Act, 1923. The really significant section of the 1921 Act is section 1 which requires the Comptroller and Auditor General "to satisfy himself that the money expended has been applied for the purpose or purposes for which grants made by Parliament were intended to provide and that the expenditure conforms to the authority which governs it."

These are the only Acts from which the Comptroller and Auditor General derives his power. These are the only Acts that have any validity in law — the two Acts which determine the functions and confer authority on the Comptroller and Auditor General. Outside these statutes, that officer has no power or function whatsoever and anything which he does or may seek to do outside them is ultra vires and indeed is in breach of his Constitutional position, as I see it.

Now let us return to the later of the British Acts in accordance with the provisions of which our own Act of 1923 obliges him to operate. The purpose of the measure was outlined by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. Hilton Young, M.P., who, when introducing it, said:

In preparing the Bill, the British Government had the assistance of an expert Committee consisting of the then Comptroller and Auditor General, his successor designate; and, as Chairman, the M.P. for Camborne, a certain Mr. Acland.

That was said in relation to the Exchequer and Audits Departments Bill, 1921. Mr. Acland subsequently became a British Minister of State. In introducing this Bill, Mr. Hilton Young, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said, and I think his statement goes to the root of this matter, at least, it does in my view:

The principal alteration is this.

— that is, the alteration in the 1866 Act —

Under the Exchequer and Audits Departments Act of 1886, it is necessary by law that the Auditor General shall carry out a full detailed 100 per cent arithmetical audit over the great bulk of the Appropriation Accounts. That was necessary in 1866... because in the first place accounting methods were bad and arithmetical irregularities were frequent; and, in the second place, because the accounting staffs of the offices were in a rudimentary and undeveloped condition. Since then the accounting staffs of the great offices have developed with the growth of modern methods and modern ideas on these subjects to a standard of efficiency of the very highest.

The reference is Exchequer and Audit Departments Bill, 1921. Second Reading 5.VIII, 1921. Hilton Young, Financial Secretary to the Treasury; volume 145, column 1884. Let me quote further:

In these circumstances, this arithmetical checking of every account by the Auditor General of every voucher and arithmetical detail is no longer considered essential by those who are best informed of the work and it leads to a very great waste of time and energy. The effect of this provision... is to give the Auditor General discretion to dispense with 100 per cent of arithmetical detail and minute check, wherever he... considers it unnecessary...; and, most important from the point of view of this House and the safeguarding of its control, whenever the Comptroller and Auditor General makes a substantial change in the methods by which he audits such accounts, he has to report that change to this House.

At column 1885 Mr. Hilton Young continued:

The principal point of substance is to replace an out-of-date method of meticulous repetition of arithmetical calculation and total checks by the more modern, more scientific and more useful method of a test applied by intelligence and discrimination.

At column 1885 Mr. Hilton Young went on to say:

Remaining provisions... not of same substantial importance. One of interest to the House is to give statutory power to the Comptroller and Auditor General to deal with ...trading accounts. Trading accounts are a growth that has sprung up since the Exchequer and Audit Departments Act... such operations as it was necessary to make in the nature of trading during the War were unknown in Government activities, and so the trading accounts had not come into existence in Government accounts... but trading accounts of income and expenditure are now of the greatest importance....

The point I want to make, arising out of these remarks, is that quite clearly nothing more was intended in relation to the Comptroller and Auditor General by the person responsible for piloting the 1921 Act through the British House of Commons than (1) that he need not make a 100 per cent arithmetical check and (2) that this was to be an audit pure and simple. This is merely to ensure that the moneys had been spent in accordance with the Vote — not whether efficiently or effectively spent but merely that there was the authority of the House of Commons to spend these moneys and that they were spent in accordance with that authority.

Accordingly, I submit that no one can find in these words any support for the policy which, of calculated purpose, the Comptroller and Auditor General appears to have pursued in relation to the Minister for Justice and his Department, his Department whosoever the Minister may happen to be.

Now let us examine the provisions of the 1866 Act, the principal Act upon which our Comptroller and Auditor General Act of 1923 is based. I have already recited its special provisions. The Act of 1866, like the amending Act, followed an investigation by a House of Commons Committee of the problems to which it was to be applied. Though it was introduced by Gladstone, it was, in fact, piloted through the House of Commons by Sir Stafford Northcote who had been Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee which had formulated the programme to which it was to give effect and who subsequently became Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Having pointed out that while the measures had amalgamated the previously separate offices of Comptroller and Auditor General he said that it had virtually abolished the controlling power. It is the controlling power which it is sought to resurrect here. I do not object to that but I want it to be resurrected in such a form that at least we ourselves will show respect for our Constitution. It is the controlling power which is now sought by the Comptroller and Auditor General. I do not wish in any way to deprecate his motives, I merely deprecate the manner in which this subject is being pursued.

Having pointed out, as I said, that while the Act of 1866 amalgamated the offices of Comptroller and Auditor General — there were separate audits at the time — and that the controlling power had virtually disappeared, he gave his reasons for that in the following terms:

True they might have made the power of the Comptroller a real living power, capable of preventing the expenditure of any money except in the way directed by Parliament, but then they must have much hampered the action of the Executive.

The Bill, Sir Stafford went on to say, was to be referred to the Committee of Public Accounts, but the House should understand what were the functions of that Committee. The Committee he said was "not one to which every question of finance was to be referred", it was:

the organ of the House appointed for a very special and uninteresting purpose... that of revising the audit of public accounts.

There were two kinds of audit, first the administrative audit conducted at the instance of the Treasury in order to see whether the money had been expended in accordance with the direction of the Treasury. The second was the appropriation audit which was performed not for the Treasury but for the House. It was with reference to this latter that the Committee was appointed. Again, mark the words of the Bill which we adopted, which we enshrined in our own code, in the Bill setting up the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General. Mark the words in which it was recommended to the House of Commons, the words which backed the Bill. This again, let me repeat, was what the Member of the House of Commons piloting the measure through the House said:

The second was the Appropriation Audit which was performed not for the Treasury but for the House.

An audit power enabling not an investigation, not a probe, not an exploration to see whether the moneys had been effectively spent but merely was there authority to back the expenditure. It was with reference to this matter that the Public Accounts Committee was appointed. Then Northcote, who had sat on that Committee, who had been chairman of the Committee which formulated the provisions of the 1866 Act went on to say that he had sat upon the Committee since its appointment and during the six years of its existence and that:

its members had devoted their attention to general principles rather than looking into the details of accounts.

He hoped that the House would be cautious about how it supplied the members of the Committee of Public Accounts with matter more attractive than their proper business. The Irish Act of 1923 incorporates the British Acts of 1866 and 1921. This is the Act from which the Comptroller and Auditor General derives his authority. It defines that authority and his functions narrowly.

He is to satisfy himself that the money expended has been applied for the purpose or purposes for which grants made by Parliament were intended to provide and that the expenditure conforms to the authority which governs it.

Now, I would agree that it may be that the scope of the Comptroller and Auditor General's authority and powers as thus defined are too restricted. It may be that, having regard to the multifarious nature of the State's activities and enterprises, the Comptroller and Auditor General may wish to delve deeper than the law permits, but that does not justify his striving to do so outside the law. It certainly does not justify a high officer of the State embarking, as has been alleged, on a mini-revolution without the support of the law to sustain him. I submit, despite what my colleague Deputy de Valera has argued, that for what the Comptroller and Auditor General seeks to do now statutory support is essential. The support of the Comptroller and Auditor General will not suffice nor will a resolution of this House. The requirements of Article 33 of the Constitution are quite definite. The functions of the Comptroller and Auditor General must be determined by law. Now, to demand access to files, even to confidential files, for the purpose of establishing, as the Comptroller and Auditor General has done, whether payments have been made or have been adequately vouched for, is quite in accordance with the law but to challenge or criticise the wisdom or effectiveness of such payments is to seek to usurp the authority which by the Constitution is vested in Dáil Éireann and in Dáil Éireann alone. Therefore, I suggest that before we go too far in this matter it is essential that the Dáil should establish a committee representative of all sides in the House which would consider what general powers might be given to the Comptroller and Auditor General, what powers of investigation are necessary in order to fulfil the functions which, as the Members of the House who are on the Committee of Public Accounts have shown, they believe to be essential in the interests of sound administration.

I am not opposed to an extension of the Comptroller and Auditor General's authority in a matter of this sort. I am conscious of the fact that the activities of the Government now are so widespread, so diverse and, indeed, so complicated, that it is highly desirable in the public interest that there should be some closer control over expenditure, or examination of the way as distinct from the purpose in which the expenditure is incurred. I am not opposed, therefore, to the idea which lies behind the Report of the Committee of Public Accounts but what I am suggesting is that if we are going to do this then in order to do it effectively we should do it in the right way, set up a committee to investigate the matter — perhaps the Committee of Public Accounts is as good as any other — but at least that we should produce in this House something rather more definite and precise than has been suggested by Deputy de Valera.

I have great respect for the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General and for the gentleman who now holds that office, but it is quite absurd that we should give any officer of this State a power to range through every Government Department in the hope that he might find — perhaps, not in the hope but it is difficult to find another word — perhaps with a suspicion that he may find concealed in the files of a Department, in the recesses of that Department, some instance of maladministration which should be exposed to the country. A roving commission of that sort is the very worst type of commission. If we are going to have this we should have it set down in black and white so that the Comptroller and Auditor General and the officers with whom he may have to deal may know what the scope of his authority is.

Mr. P. Hogan

(South Tipperary): I wish, first of all, to thank all the speakers who have contributed to this debate and I am particularly pleased with the spirit in which the matter has been debated. There is just one small point I should like to clarify. The point was not raised but, lest there should be any notion abroad that this is a personal vendetta, I wish to bring to the notice of the House the fact that this file was, first of all, refused by a junior officer in the Department of Justice; subsequently that refusal was sustained by the Assistant Secretary and, ultimately, the Secretary refused the file, sustaining his officials in their refusal, and, at a later stage, having taken his own decision, he got the support of his Minister in writing. I mention this because this decision was apparently taken on a broad basis; it was not just one individual with a notion in his head and some kind of vendetta. It is only fair that that should be stated.

The suggestion with regard to legislation is really nothing more than a convenient peg on which to hang a hat; the Committee are really more concerned with getting things done and getting things put right and the suggestion of legislation was really for the purpose of giving the House an opportunity of discussing the matter. Deputy MacEntee has very clearly covered what would appear to be a defect, but most speakers here this evening would, I think, be quite satisfied with a return to and the maintenance of what was the status quo. I do not think anybody is much pushed about legislation. Deputy MacEntee is, of course, a purist; he wants cut and dried legislation. The Department of Finance take the opposite view. They are afraid that, as a result of legislation, we might find ourselves in a much more inflexible position than we are at the moment. They are inclined to leave the matter in the flexible state in which it is at the moment. That appears to be the Government's thinking also. Presumably the matter ends there. It appears to me that the Government have decided to restore the status quo; the Comptroller and Auditor General will have access to all files and, if there is a secret and confidential document, he will go personally to the Department and examine the document there. That has been the practice in the past. It has worked for 40 years and, perhaps, it will work for another 40 years. The Government are probably working on the basis that the system has given satisfaction for a long time and they do not see any reason why they should introduce legislation to change it. Perhaps the Committee may think later that they still want legislation but, judging by the debate here, I think the matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of everybody. The impasse is resolved with the restoration of the status quo. I am grateful to the Minister for coming to that conclusion because it resolves our problem for the present, at least, and we hope also for the future.

Motion agreed to.