Committee Reports > List of Committees > Dáil > 1952 > Committee of Public Accounts > Report - Appropriation Accounts 1949 - 1950

APPENDIX IX.

EMPLOYMENT OF CLEANERS IN THE CENSORSHIP OF PUBLICATIONS OFFICE.

Rúnaí,

Coiste um Chuntais Phoiblí

Arising out of my examination before the Public Accounts Committee on the 25th October, 1951, and with reference to the Chairman’s questions concerning the explanation of the cause of the variation between expenditure and grant in the case of Subhead A.3 of the Vote for the Office of the Minister for Justice I submit the following note in amplification of my evidence.

The building in which the Offices of the Censorship of Publications is situated’ contains a good deal of accommodation in excess of the requirements of the Censorship Office and has always been occupied by other Departments as well as by the Department of Justice. The cost of cleaning the Offices in the building (including the Offices of the Censorship) was borne on Subhead D.1 of the Vote for Commissions and Special Inquiries prior to October, 1948, when the charge was taken over by the Department of Justice at the request and with the sanction of the Department of Finance, the view being taken that this was a liability that it would be more appropriate for the Department of Justice to bear seeing that the occupancy of the Censorship was of a more permanent character than that of the other official occupants of the building who were constantly changing. This explains why it is made to appear in Subhead A.3 of the Vote for the Office of the Minister for Justice in the Estimate for 1949-50 that in this year provision for a cleaner was being made for the first time whereas in fact provision had been made for a cleaner in the previous year but, as I have explained, in another Vote. The explanation of the excess incurred during 1949-50, which is attributed in the note to the Appropriation Account to the “appointment of a cleaner,” is that there was more accommodation being used for official purposes during this year than in the previous year with the result that the services of an additional cleaner were required (for some of the year for part of her time only) as a single cleaner was unable to cope with the work. Thus, the note in the Appropriation Account is correct though, in the circumstances, hardly sufficiently explanatory.