Cuidím leis an mBille seo, Bille i leith an Ardreachtaire Cuntas agus Ciste. Mar a deir an seanfhocal, más maith is mithid. Táimid ag plé na ceiste seo ó 1986 i leith, agus luaitear go bhfuil sé in am dúinn scóip obair an Ardreachtaire a oiriúnú don ré seo. Téann na rialacha, na hAchtanna agus na horduithe siar go dtí 1866. Tá géarghá leis an reachtaíocht seo agus cuirim fáilte roimh an mBille.
The opening paragraph of the explanatory memorandum states that the purpose of the Bill is to bring the legislation governing national audit up to date on the basis of a review carried out of developments in this country and abroad and to consolidate existing legislation relating to the functions of the Comptroller and Auditor General.
This legislation will ensure greater accountability for public expenditure and foster better public administration. The Government, in this regard, are also publishing a White Paper which sets out the background to the legislation. For many years, but particularly since 1986, we have been discussing the need to establish the activities of the Comptroller and Auditor General, whose functions are governed by legislation that goes as far back as 1866. While we have been advancing legislation, as was required, down through the years this most important function of the operation of Government and of finance and was not attended to. The day of reckoning has arrived. We are all aware of occasions in recent times where, if we had had the benefit of proposed legislation in the Bill of the kind as suggested in the White Paper, much of the discomfort, and I put it as mildly as that, of the cases of appropriation of funds, how deals were done, how sites were sold and huge profits made, would have been avoided. These incidents have highlighted the urgent need for this Bill and for the White Paper.
The nature of the audit process carried out by the Comptroller and Auditor General will be extended to include, at his discretion, statutory examination of economic efficiency and management effectiveness. The range of bodies to be covered by the audit and examination process will include, as usual, Government Departments and non-commercial State bodies as well as third level education bodies and health boards. The last two of these, in particular, require to be brought into the realm of the examination and audit process of the Comptroller and Auditor General. I would refer to the deal concerning a certain site which we all know of and which caused so much concern. Maybe if we had had in place legislation such as that now proposed events of that kind would not have occurred.
An indication of the bureaucratic slowness is that the health boards' audit is carried out by the local government auditors who are officers of the Department of the Environment. They were responsible for audits before the setting up of the health boards 20 years ago and they continue to be responsible for auditing the accounts of the health boards. That is the position because the forerunners to the health boards were known as local health authorities who were set up by the local authorities. I am endeavouring to indicate the absolute need for this legislation and the example I have given should be sufficient.
Under the Bill the Comptroller and Auditor General will be responsible for examining the audit of the health boards. In regard to local authorities, health boards and vocational education committees, I would like to quote from the White Paper on the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General which states:
Elected local authorities operating under the aegis of the Department of the Environment (mainly county councils, county borough councils, borough corporations, urban district councils and town comissioners) now receive about half their total income from the Exchequer for their day-to-day spending. About one-third comes from the Exchequer whereas the capital programme is virtually funded by the Exchequer.
I agree with the statement in the White Paper that:
The Dáil has a justifiable interest in the expenditure by these authorities of money provided by central Government (£628 million in 1992). At the same time these authorities remain primarily answerable to the local electorate rather than to the Dáil. The Government are therefore satisfied that the audit arrangements for these authorities should continue as at present.
That is important. It further states:
Health boards and vocational education committees receive 95% and 91% of their income, respectively, from the Exchequer and the case for having the expenditures of these bodies audited and reported on to the Dáil is compelling. Not only is the bulk of the expenditure of these authorities voted by the Dáil but the amounts involved are very substantial — about £1.4 billion in 1992 and the current parliamentary review of their auditing expenditures is limited. It has therefore been decided that the audit of health board and vocational education committee expenditure will in future be the responsibility of the Comptroller and Auditor General rather than, as at present, the Local Government Audit Service.
I will refer to the allocation of moneys in respect of local authorities later. I want to refer to elements of the legislation and the current functions of the Comptroller and Auditor General and his excellent staff, and the improvements proposed in this legislation to give greater effectiveness to his work. The Comptroller and Auditor General will be empowered under this legislation to carry out, at his discretion, inspections of organisations and bodies which receive the bulk of their funding directly from Departments. Up to now the Department's accounting officer went before the Committee of Public Accounts, reported and answered questions, but a link was missing in the chain in that the organisations and bodies who receive funding from Departments were not called before the Committee of Public Accounts. I am privileged to be serving a second term on that committee having served on it in the mid-eighties. I am very familiar with the operation of the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General and the activities of the Committee of Public Accounts and I will refer to some of those later. Some experiences I had in regard to that office and that committee were good and others were not so good and I will deal with them later. The fact that we can now call in representatives of those organisations and bodies who receive funding from the Department is a welcome provision in this Bill.
The purpose of such inspections is to ensure that public funds have been spent for the purposes for which they were authorised and this is a very important provision in the Bill. Some bodies and organisations that receive moneys from Departments are of the view that the moneys must be spent within a financial year. They would not consider handing back those moneys to the Department or leaving them over to the following year even though some of that funding may not be used for the purposes for which it was originally allocated. I should take a case to the allocation of £250,000 to the Southern Health Board of which I have recently become a member. It was not possible to spend that money for the purpose for which it was allocated. We were advised by management at a meeting that the money would be spent and that some use would be found for it. I welcome the granting of additional powers of the Comptroller and Auditor General so that cases like this can be followed up.
Members of the House will be aware that the Department of Finance have completed a detailed review of the legislation relating to the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General. It is extraordinary that some of the legislation dates back to 1866 with changes in the twenties and further changes in 1946. What were we doing all this time?
It is never too late to amend legislation. The review has taken account of our national needs and international developments. It has had regard to developments in auditing which have extended well beyond the traditional fields of accuracy and regularity to cover the key areas which will always remain economy, efficiency and effectiveness. The Government have concluded, on the basis of that review, that it is desirable to update and to extend the statutory mandate of the Comptroller and Auditor General and to widen the scope of the audit of that office for public service bodies. The legislation now before us has been introduced for that purpose. Because it has been such a long time since the enactment of legislation in relation to the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General this Bill will represent the most far-reaching change in the statutory mandate of the Comptroller and Auditor General since the foundation of the State. The legislation will give greater assurance to the Dáil and to the taxpayer that there is value for money from public services.
The White Paper published by the Minister for Finance gives the background to the proposed legislation. Equally as important, the White Paper aims to stimulate public interest in this area. To be honest, when it comes to public interest the affairs of the Comptroller and Auditor General have been left out in the cold. That is not due to any fault of the Comptroller and Auditor General and his staff, possibly not through the fault of any of us as individuals. Legislators and Governments down through the decades have not seemed to make any effort to stimulate the kind of public interest in the workings of and the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General that should have been stimulated. It is to be hoped that this debate and the White Paper will redress that imbalance.
One could suggest with justifiable confidence that the changes proposed will be successful in improving accountability and public administration. To achieve that success it is essential that the proposed changes have full co-operation and commitment from all concerned. This is important if we are to ensure that we get the best use of scarce resources — something we have been trying to do, particularly since 1987. It would be fair to say that since the present Administration came into Government in 1987 — and I played a small role in that Government — we set about getting value for money, achieving the best use of scarce resources and eliminating waste. That was all part of the overall economic plan for recovery. Things were in a desperate state but the Government have made a contribution. The determination with which that objective was handled by the Government in 1987, and particularly by the Minister of Finance at that time, Mr. Ray MacSharry, led to greater regulation in finances and turned round our country's economy. Mr. MacSharry was called unpleasant names — I am not going to repeat them, there are others who can do so if they wish — but there is one sure fact: he set in motion a train of events that brought regulation into our finances and turned round our economy. The effectiveness of that determination and commitment has been seen, is being seen and will be seen — that is the important thing, will be seen — for a long time to come. It is ensuring that we get the best possible return from our scarce resources. That is a very important phrase.
The Comptroller and Auditor General has two main statutory functions and I shall deal briefly with those. One is to ensure that no money is issued from central funds to the Executive except for purposes approved by the Oireachtas. His second function, as Auditor General, is to audit Government accounts for accuracy and regularity. In addition, the Comptroller and Auditor General has, for many years, with the agreement of the Department of Finance — this was one of the changes that took place in the vacuum of the decades about which I spoke earlier — undertaken a non-statutory directionary function that involves identifying and reporting to the Dáil on instances in which it appears to him that there has been a loss, a waste or uneconomic expenditure by Government Departments.
It is also important to refer to the range of the audit of the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Comptroller and Auditor General audits: first, the accounts of issues from central funds; second, the Appropriation Accounts and other accounts attached to the Appropriation Accounts; third, the Departments' stock and store accounts; fourth, the accounts of receipts of revenue of the State; fifth, the accounts of a number of Department funds, State bodies and other agencies.
The next point of reference would be the nature of the audit of the Comptroller and Auditor General. The Comptroller and Auditor General examines the appropriation accounts from two different angles. First, there is a financial audit which, like a commercial audit, tests the accuracy of the records and the reliability of the systems underlying them so as to establish that the accounts are correct. The tests carried out in the course of the exercise have been designed so that there is a reasonable chance of detecting fraud, overpayments and technical errors. Second, there is a regulatory audit to ensure that expenditure accords with the intention of the Dáil, that expenditure has been authorised by the Department of Finance and that the provisions of the relevant statutes, regulations and so on have been complied with.
On rare occasions expenditure authorised by the Department of Finance has become the focus of attention of the Committee of Public Accounts. Another deficiency has been encountered, despite the apparently hard line taken by the Department of Finance to ensure that every "i" is dotted and every "t" is crossed before approving expenditure. That is their function, and I would not for one moment try to deny it to them. However, there have been times, and I will deal with a particular instance later, when the Department of Finance would not approve of the way things were done, of the accounting system in operation. In other words, they went too much by the book — I will deal with this later — when dealing with expenditure on the development of the pier at An Daingean.
I should like to speak for a short time on the Committee of Public Accounts and its functions. The committee's functions as set out in the Dáil Standing Order 130 are: "to examine and report to the Dáil on the annual appropriation accounts and to suggest alterations and improvements in the form of the Estimates submitted to the Dáil." I am reminded that when I was previously a member of this committee in the mid-eighties it was known as the Appropriation Accounts Committee. That was a lovely term but none of us, even those of us who were on the committee, knew what it was all about until we joined it.
I was pleased to note when I was reinstated as a member earlier this year that the title had been changed to "Committee of Public Accounts." That is a much more understandable and identifiable title than Appropriation Accounts Committee. I welcome the change in the title in the sense that the public can relate to it. The comittee work in the interests of the Dáil but more importantly in the interests of the public. The persons who pay the piper are obliged to call the tune; they are the people who subscribe by means of taxation both direct and indirect, which eventually is allocated to the various Departments in Votes and so forth.
I indicated earlier, and it is worth repeating, perhaps in a different way, that, although there has been no statutory change in regard to auditing for a long time, a development of the Comptroller and Auditor General's role has taken place with the full support of the Department of Finance and the Committee of Public Accounts. Small additions were made, new roles and agreements were confirmed by the Department of Finance that they could investigate or examine bodies or groups which were not covered by the original legislation. All those small adjustments arose out of the need to expand the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General which should have been expanded as the economy grew, as science and technology developed and as the whole world progressed especially in the last half of this century. The office and the activities of the Comptroller and Auditor General all but remained static. If people study the White Paper they will be surprised to learn that that has been the case. I recomend that people take note of this debate and realise the functions and the effectiveness of the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General — limited though they have been up to now. With the expanded functions I am sure they will be happy with the manner in which the funds are controlled and optimistic that never again will they learn of events that occurred because some of the activities to which I have referred were outside the remit of the Comptroller and Auditor General.
A further example of an effort being made to expand the role and activities of the Comptroller and Auditor General was that in December 1967 when the then Rúnai of the Department of Finance, in a letter to the Appropriation Accounts Committee, explained this development in relation to administrative efficiency as follows: "This function is that of seeing whether, in the implementation of policy, there is a waste of public moneys for any reason." It has always been the view of the Department of Finance 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. These are all commendable objectives. That was and still is their view. This important function of the Comptroller and Auditor General has the sanction of custom and good sense rather than of an express statutory provision. Even though we did not have the legislation and the statutory regulations to improve the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General, it was clear that some extra measure of responsibility was given by the Department of Finance out of necessity. By means of this legislation we are giving statutory effect to some of the measures I have outlined.
I hope in the course of Second Stage and on Committee Stage, as is customary with all legislation, that the interest of Members and of the public having been aroused as well as of the statutory bodies referred to, all will have observations to offer. We would welcome suggestions from whatever discussions emanate from this debate and the White Paper to strengthen the legislation. If we have not had legislation on the subject since the foundation of the State we had better avail of this opportunity to get it right. We have had occasions when we did not get things right in legislation. I am reminded of one or two of those occasions, one of which was the rod licence issue. We did not get it right on the first occasion, but having got the views of many people throughout the country, then on the second occasion we succeeded.
Because we erred in the legislation, a monopoly was created. Nobody knows this better than the people of Cork city and county where in the eighties one company only were licensed to provide a multi-channel service. For economic reasons, which we all understand, the company said they could not provide a service to all the citizens living within the area covered by the licence. The resilience of Cork people is well known and they did not sit back and wait until the company thought it was profitable and sound to extend the multi-channel service. Rather they got together — like the old Meitheal — and, as the old saying goes, ní ceart go cur le chéile, there is strength in numbers — and provided a service for the small sum of £30 per year, which was not always collected. They provided a multi channel system.
The legislation provided that there could be only one licence for the MMDS system, which was regarded as a technological advance on the cable system, in an area. The existing cable licence holder was granted the licence to install what was regarded as the marvellous new MMDS system. As a result, the service provided by the community for the community was declared illegal, which it was under the laws passed by this House.
My passing reference to this issue may be rather long but the point I am making is that mistakes can be made in the context of legislation that may need to be corrected. As I said, we must ensure that we get the legislation right on this occasion. I am giving as an example of the mistakes which can be made in legislation the appalling situation in the rebel county where one licence only has been granted to provide the MMDS system, thus creating a monopoly. Like me, many people believe that this legislation is not correct, good or fair. This being so, it should be amended. Of course, the snag here is that the Government could have a legal battle on their hands if the contract with the licence holder is breached.
Many people in County Cork have indicated to me and my colleagues — Deputy Dennehy who is sitting beside me is well aware of what I am talking about — that they will not accept the MMDS system from the company for two reasons: first, the cost of the cable system in Cork is twice what it is in Dublin and, second, regardless of the number of benders or twisters, as they are called, installed many homes in County Cork cannot and will not be serviced by the new system. People living in the areas where the new system may be made available have said — these are the words they used — that Cork multi-channel can stuff it. This means that they are not going to avail of the service on point of principle. They were able to provide a service for themselves at the ridiculously low cost of £30 per year. I should say that on many occasions senior citizens and social welfare recipients were not asked to pay the £30 charge.
As I am not making a sales pitch for the licence holder I am not going to quote the installation charge and the quarterly payment. People who wish to watch the sports channel or movie channel will have to pay additional charges. People who have two televisions will be required to pay one and a half times the amount while people with three televisions will have to pay twice the amount. Restrictions are also laid down in regard to taping and so on. In the main, the people of Cork will not accept these restrictions. The promoters of this service should rethink their position.
People may say that very few people have three televisions. Despite the perceived economic downturn in Cork, I can tell the House that many households have more than one television. For example, many young people buy televisions which they keep in their bedrooms. This means they can watch programmes while their mothers and fathers watch television in the dining room or sitting room. I watch television in the kitchen whenever I get a chance. I know that one television per household is the norm but we should not underestimate the number of households where there is more than one television.
The Leas-Cheann Comhairle has been very patient in allowing me to make a lengthy passing reference to what I regard as faulty legislation passed by this House. This issue needs to be looked at so that the same mistake is not made in regard to this Bill. The Committee of Public Accounts discussed this issue. That committee is all about accountability. On the day he was being examined, the accounting officer of the Department of Tourism, Transport and Communications was asked if that Department had any function or role to play in regard to the prices charged for these services. It transpires that the people who issue the licence have no statutory powers to control the prices charged.
There has been a row about service charges in Cork. I live in the county area and have been paying service charges for 30 years. If I did not have a water supply I would have to carry buckets of water from the pump.
