Minutes of proceedings of the third meeting
of the Public Accounts Committee
held in the Room 152, Parliament Buildings
on Wednesday 28^th June 2000

1. Apologies
2. Minutes from Meeting of 8 June 2000
3. Matters arising from the minutes of previous meeting
4. Presentation by Mr. John Dowdall, Comptroller and Auditor General
5. Question and Answer Session
6. Any other business

Present: Mr B Bell (Chairman)
Ms S Ramsey (Deputy Chairman)
Ms P Armitage
Mr R Beggs
Mr M Carrick
Mr S Close
Mr J Dallat
Mr D McClelland
Ms J Morrice
Mr D O'Connor

In Attendance: Mr M Rickard (Committee Clerk)
Mr J Campbell (Assistant Committee Clerk)
Miss L Tracey

Prior to commencement of business, the Chairman welcomed Mr. Dowdall, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), and his staff to the meeting. He then outlined what he considered to be the main objectives of the meeting:

1. To discuss the PAC points of procedure
2. To be briefed by the C&AG and his staff on the NIAO Report on Road Safety in Northern Ireland (HC 10 of Session 1999-2000)

Following this introduction, the Chairperson turned to the order of business.

Mr Dallat sent an apology informing the Committee that he would be late for the meeting due to prior engagements.

The minutes were an accurate record of the previous meeting.

There were no matters arising from the previous meeting.

The C&AG gave a brief outline of the procedures applied in the Public Accounts Committee in Westminster. He detailed their time allocation, the order in which the Chairman invites questions, the structure of the brief, questioning of the Accounting Officer, acceptance of written evidence and the roles of the Treasury Officer of Accounts and the Comptroller and Auditor General. This led to a discussion on the merits of such procedures.

The Committee should adopt the procedures as applied by the Westminster PAC.

The C&AG then proceeded to outline what he considered to be the main conclusions drawn from the Road Safety Report - Road Safety has not been adequately prioritised or co-ordinated.

After the presentation, a five-minute video was shown to the Committee which highlighted the high level of public interest in the subject matter.

Following the video, Mr Jones, (NIAO Director of VFM) gave a talk which detailed, chapter by chapter, the main issues in the Report. During the presentation he also addressed a number of queries raised by the members.

(Mr Dallat arrived at 11:03am.)

He also outlined the type of questions to be asked in order to draw out conclusions and recommendations for the subsequent PAC Report.

Following the presentations, a lively Question and Answer Session took place between the C&AG and his staff and the members. Statistics and Graphs within the Report were interpreted and explained and the remit of the Committee was clarified.

Mr O'Connor left the room at 11:38am.
Mr O'Connor returned at 11:40am.

It was also drawn to the attention of the members that further statistics on Road Safety, produced by RUC, would be available by Friday 30^th June.

Additional questions to be put to the Accounting Officers at the hearing were also put forward and discussed by the members. Throughout the discussion it was emphasised that the questions in the brief, forwarded to members prior to the meeting, covered all the main issues in the Report. However, they were neither prescriptive nor complete and members could ask either different or supplementary questions if they considered it appropriate.

6. Any other business

Mr Rickard raised the issue that other committees were keen to hold sessions on reports already produced by NIAO which had not been reported on by the Committee. The C&AG advised that it was within the remit of PAC to pass its reports (following DFP's Response to the Report) to other Committees if it was considered appropriate. He suggested that the impact of the PAC Report could be augmented by such a practice.

Primacy of the NIAO reports lie with PAC, but as suggested by the C&AG, following PAC hearings, Reports may be referred to the appropriate committee.

Mr Rickard also raised the interest which was being expressed in the soon to be published NIAO report on Rural Development.

Due to the high level of interest, the NIAO Rural Development Report will be the second report to be discussed by the Committee on Thursday 28^th September 2000 at 10:30am in the Senate Chamber. The original report allocated for this hearing, DANI: Suspected Frauds and Grants to Irish Sport Horse Genetic Testing Unit Ltd will be heard at a later date.

(iii) Assembly Ruling on PAC - It was raised in the meeting that on Monday 26^th June, a motion had been debated in the Assembly "That this Assembly welcomes the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report on the Industrial Development Board (HC 66) and directs that the Northern Ireland Assembly Public Accounts Committee give continuing attention to the issues raised in the report."

During the debate the Chairman had expressed concerns in respect of the motion, since he considered that, under the Standing Orders of the Assembly, the Committee could not be "directed" by the Assembly. The Chairman reported that this ruling was currently being considered by the Committee Chairmen's Liaison Committee.

The meeting closed at 12:15pm.