Vol. 351 No. 5
I move:
That a sum not exceeding £1,087,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1984, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General.
There are no extraordinary charges in the overall level of the Vote this year.
We entirely support this Estimate. The position has been particularly evident at the Committee on Public Expenditure, of which I am vice-chairman. In the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General this year attention was directed to what had become a scandal which we in the committee were anxious should be tackled — the manner in which property is being leased by the State and left unoccupied for periods of three years and longer. We are indebted to the Comptroller and Auditor General for having brought this matter to public attention and for enabling us on the Committee on Public Expenditure to thrash it out in more detail. It is his function only to bring it to our attention and it is our function always to eliminate the abuse. We have found situations where Departments having requested specifications for office accommodation changed the specifications at the point at which the accommodation had been arranged through the Office of Public Works. Unfortunately in all too many cases they decided that the accommodation being arranged in accordance with the original specifications was not suitable for their needs. Consequently, the Office of Public Works, having made arrangements to lease properties on the basis of specifications, found themselves with properties on their hands that would not be occupied for a considerable time.
It is intolerable that any Department would be allowed to refuse to occupy premises that had been leased or built at their request and in accordance with their specifications and that the taxpayer should then be left with an extra burden. I am speaking purely on a non-party and, I hope, on an all-party basis in saying this. It is vitally important that we would either strengthen the authority of the Office of Public Works or ensure that some other section of each Department would be made answerable immediately and severely for any such wastage.
Another situation that has arisen is that the State is occupying about 40 per cent of the total office property in this city and is thereby creating the market demand of which it complains in terms of cost. It was suggested to us on the committee, as a consequence of our examination of the report of the comptroller and Auditor General, that one of the reasons for the State having to pay the very high rentals for property which in many cases they would not occupy for two years, was because they had to pay the market rate. When we inquired further we found that the people who created that inflated market rate were the people who were complaining, namely the State, which was spending money on behalf of the taxpayer. This is a matter we must tackle together consistently because we cannot allow the continuation of a scandal of this nature and we must all act in a consistent way to minimise the impact on the Exchequer of this situation.
I wish to use this occasion to bring to the attention of the Minister something which is in the same vein as the issue raised by Deputy O'Kennedy. The committee on State-sponsored bodies, in their recent review of a number of such bodies, have noticed a lack of co-ordination in the use of State property as between the various semi-State companies. There are situations such as the ESB renting private property when perhaps in the same street CIE have a building.
I am not happy that this is relevant to the Estimate before the House.
Recently the Comptroller and Auditor General in his report raised the question of the efficient use of State property and consequently I thought I would avail of this occasion to bring to the Minister's attention the work of the committee in the same regard so that he might take into account the work being done at that level.
There seems to be no clearing body in regard to the use of property by semi-State companies. This leads to the crazy result that one company can be renting private property when perhaps next door another State company may have property that is for rent or for sale. This wastage is costing the State a great deal of money. One example of this wastage that came to light in the course of our investigations was that of the CIE hotels where a 35-year lease was signed for the Powerscourt House restaurant. The venture has not worked out and now the State is stuck with this 35-year lease.
CIE are stuck with it.
They are first cousins.
Perhaps if the property and been rented from a State body the State could have re-leased it.
I do not see what this has to do with the Estimate for the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General.
It is proper that I record my appreciation and, I am sure, the appreciation of the House to the Comptroller and Auditor General for the manner in which he discharges his functions as illustrated, for example, by the fact that he has drawn the attention of the Committee on Public Expenditure to the matters raised by the Deputies. I am very glad these matters were raised because they require close examination and accounting. I am sure Deputies will agree that, in addition, these matters are rather more complicated than they are represented to be sometimes in the more popular evening tabloids where the level of indignation is high while the level of information is often rather low.
The Minister must be talking about the Evening Standard.
The Deputy knows that is not what I am talking about. I am glad the committee have got down to work on these two areas. This is a reflection of the fact that the Government's policy in relation to Dáil reform is producing results.
We will help the Minister further if he will allow us.
