THE DÁIL Public Accounts Committee is to write to State boards seeking details of the credit cards they issue, the limits on them and details of staff cars.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the committee yesterday which was examining the Department of Agriculture’s system of farm inspections in 2009.
Seán Fleming (FF) had asked the secretary general of the Department of Agriculture Tom Moran about the financial controls it exerted over State boards such as Teagasc and An Bord Bia.
He said the department was funding Teagasc to the tune of €119 million. While he was not suggesting there was anything remiss in any of these organisations, it would be useful to know this information.
Mr Moran said the department would have members on such boards but would have no direct input into the day-to-day running of these organisations.
Committee chairman John McGuinness said they should write to all State bodies asking them for details of credit cards and for information on staff cars.
“This would be very useful information for this committee to have instead of it coming out in dribs and drabs down the line,” he said.
On the inspection issue, the Comptroller and Auditor General John Buckley said it was surprising the randomly selected inspections in the area of eligibility resulted in more penalties than those conducted using a risk-based methodology.
“Usually, risk-targeted cases should result in detection of more non-compliance than a sample selected at random,” he said.
Mr Moran said the basis of the inspection regime was laid down by strict EU requirements and under the single farm payment.
As there was a higher proportion of field visits involved in the random selection process, the results of inspections tended to be distorted in favour of randomly selected inspection, which would explain the apparent anomaly.
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