Decentralisation a big challenge, says Purcell

Managing the operational risks involved in decentralisation will pose "an enormous challenge" for Government Departments over the coming years, the Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG) warned yesterday.

Mr John Purcell said the recently announced decentralisation programme would be one of the areas of activity in future years where accountability would be required.

Mr Purcell told a Dublin conference that he believed a proper public audit and accountability regime was "more than just a glorified blame game" and could help assess how the public service was meeting the challenges it faced.

"People like to call me a Government watchdog but that's not really accurate because it's Dáil Éireann that watches over the Government and holds it accountable.

"My office gives the Dáil objective and independent information so that it can do its job effectively," he told the conference, entitled "Regulation, Audit and Inspection - Delivering in the Public Interest", and which was organised by the Institute of Public Administration and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy.

Mr Purcell's reports are used by the Dáil Committee of Public Accounts (PAC) as a starting point for most of its inquiries.

He said the impact of "public censure" in recent years had given an impetus to the governance and related initiatives that have been introduced by successive governments.

"Whatever about appearing before the committee trying to defend the indefensible at a first hearing, there is clearly no percentage in doing so a second time unless you have masochistic tendencies."

Mr Purcell said it was his natural reaction to harbour a healthy scepticism about the impact of the panoply of initiatives implemented under the general banner of the Strategic Management Initiative, "particularly in the light of the findings of recent reports of my own".

However, the effort to improve the performance of the public service should not be branded as a failure as there had been achievements. Also the time and effort required in implementing the extent of change required should not be underestimated.

The recommendations of the Working Group on the Accountability of Secretaries General and Accounting Officers, would have a radical effect on the governance of Departments if implemented, Mr Purcell said.

He said he strongly believed that improved performance was an important beneficial by-product of the audit process rather than the primary goal.

Discussing the topic of claims for savings arising from audits, he asked who should get the credit for the "crock of gold" realised for the Exchequer and arising from the PAC's DIRT inquiry.

Should the credit go to the PAC, the Revenue, his office, or even the Sunday Independent, which first raised the issue of AIB and bogus non-resident accounts, he asked?

Mr Purcell said some senior civil servants had suggested that the fear of a critical report by the Comptroller & Auditor General "coupled with a subsequent keel hauling at the PAC with the attendant opprobrium in the media", would lead to the development of a risk-averse culture among civil servants. "It is a point worthy of serious consideration."

Mr Purcell said he had no difficulty with the law that states his office should not question the merits of policies or policy objectives. These were matters for Government.

He would, however, make a distinction between Government policy and departmental or ministerial policy.

"To qualify as policy it must, in my opinion, have the sanction of Cabinet. Even then I see a role for the C&AG in establishing if the information underpinning the policy decision is as good as it should be."

Mr Purcell mentioned the extension of medical card eligibility to persons aged 70 years or over, and the special pension scheme for those with pre-1953 social insurance contributions as examples where other policy decisions might have been taken "if the true exposure for the taxpayer had been known to the Cabinet at the time it made its decisions".