TD lambasts Govt agency's financial failures
A GAA club could run its finances better than a Government agency, the Dáil’s public spending watchdog heard today.
Fine Gael TD John Deasy levelled heavy criticism at officials from the Valuations Office when it appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in Leinster House.
The PAC was discussing financial shortcomings highlighted by the Comptroller & Auditor General’s 2002 report on the office, which carries out valuations of commercial and industrial properties to calculate local authority rates payable.
Mr Deasy told the PAC: “There are pretty fundamental and basic mistakes going on. GAA clubs could handle their finances better.
He added: “It seems to be an agency that has been lost in the bowels of time. It badly needs modernisation. It just has been very badly run.”
The committee heard that an employee went on maternity leave with more than €6,600 in cash and cheques received at the agency’s public office.
When the incident came to light, officials succeeded in recovered €4,528, but over €2,096 is still outstanding as some cheques went out of date.
The employee was later demoted from her position after an internal inquiry.
Mr Deasy criticised the leniency of the penalty and added: “It’s hard to be fired from the civil service, isn’t it?”
Valuations Commissioner Aiden Murray, who said the incident wasn’t reported to the gardaí, claimed that it was difficult to establish if the incident could amount to theft because the employee had made some efforts to lodge the money.
The Commissioner insisted that new procedures meant one person would not be in charge of receiving, recording and lodging money from the public office.
“I fully accept that these errors and shortcomings at the time were fairly fundamental and I’m satisfied that they have since been corrected,” Mr Murray said.
“The procedures and controls introduced during the past two years have corrected all deficiencies and weaknesses.
“In terms of this being an organisation that is drifting, or derelict or losing its way, I don’t believe that is the case.”
Mr Deasy further claimed that only 36 specific valuation requests out of a batch of 457 received between 1998 and 2005 were completed by the office.
He also pointed to an underspend in allocated administration funding of €2.2m in 2002 and €2.8m in 2003.
He added: “They are staggering figures. All of this money hasn’t been used and at the same time a massive backlog of work is being left there.
“There must be some serious industrial relations problems going on there.”
The Commissioner earlier explained that allocated money was not being spent because of difficulties with the Re-evaluation Project.
Under this initiative, the Valuation Office was tasked with carrying up-to-date valuations of 160,000 commercial premises for the first time since the 1870s.
An independent report recommended it needed to hire 30 contract valuers but when 15 were recruited in 2003, the project ran into industrial relations problems.
The Re-evaluation Project eventually commenced in November 2005 when Mr Murray was appointed Valuations Commissioner.
