In accordance with regulations made under the Comptroller and Auditor General Act of 1993, the 35 city and county enterprise boards are required to have their annual accounts audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
I am informed that there were delays in the completion of the audit of the annual accounts by the C&AG for the initial years, 1993-1995, of the operation of the boards. These delays, which in turn affected the timing of the lodgment of annual returns by the boards to the Companies Registration Office, were unavoidable given the additional workload for the Office of the C & AG created by the establishment of the 35 boards nationwide in October 1993.
The position has improved considerably in the meantime and in some instances the C & AG now contracts the work to local auditors in order to expedite matters.
The Government has decided recently, on foot of the recommendations by the Task Force on Local Government and Local Development, that post 1999 the enterprise function for the development of micro-enterprises — ten employees or fewer — will be centralised in the enterprise boards. The funding for the boards during this period will be determined by the Government in the context of new national plan 2000-2006.
Thus the enterprise boards will continue to be a major force for job creation into the new millennium, building on their impressive record to date. In the period October 1993 to end 1997, enterprise boards have supported the creation of 11,000 full-time jobs, with a further 7,000 jobs expected to be created during the two years 1998-99.
