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APPENDIX 32.FOREST PARK, LOUGH KEY: ALLOCATION OF EXPENDITURE.An Cléireach, An Coiste um Chuntais Poiblí. At the proceedings of the Committee on 16th April, 1970, I undertook to supply a statement in regard to questions raised by the Comptroller and Auditor General on the allocation of expenditure as between the Forestry Division and Bord Fáilte in the development of Forest Park at Lough Key. The Forest Park is wholly owned by the Minister for Lands and all the facilities provided under the joint Forestry Division—Bord Fáilte project remain in the ownership of the Minister for Lands and will as part of the forest park be managed exclusively by the Forestry Division. The Minister for Lands is therefore the effective principal in the project and Bord Fáilte’s role is that of promotion, in the interests of tourism, by way of grant towards the cost. In the early stages of the project, for reasons of convenience, Bord Fáilte also acted as the agent of the Minister in contract placement. This dual relationship between the two parties was not, I fear, brought out clearly in my reply to the original query of the Comptroller and Auditor General and has been the cause of some misapprehension. It is not, in the event, appropriate to refer to the works as being “carried out by Bord Fáilte with contributions from voted moneys”. I am, then, unable to agree with the Comptroller and Auditor General in the statement that £25,337 had, at 31st March, 1969, been overissued from voted money and should not have been charged to the Forestry Vote. In my view, in the circumstances of this case, it is proper to charge to the Forestry Vote expenditure actually incurred, within a limit of the total approved expenditure on the development, provided that grant payment by Bord Fáilte ultimately adjusts the expenditure borne from voted moneys to the 3 to 1 proportion envisaged in the Department of Finance sanction. The arrangement made with Bord Fáilte did not envisage an adjustment within each accounting year and the Department of Finance did not impose any such limitation on the authority given for the project. At no time did payments from the Forestry Vote exceed the expenditure on the project and there was therefore no question of funds being made available from the Forestry Vote for the benefit of Bord Fáilte. Here, a reference on my part to “an element of funding against further pending expenditure” in relation to the payments charged to the Forestry Vote in 1968/69 may have caused misconception. This reference was in the context of administrative arrangements with Bord Fáilte as to the overall continued funding of the work but does not affect the strict accounting situation under which the total expenditure charged to the Vote was within the operative limit of costs already actually incurred and therefore properly chargeable. In substance the situation is that this was not a Bord Fáilte project to which the Minister for Lands was committed to contribute but a Department of Lands project to which Bord Fáilte was committed to contribute. T. O’BRIEN, Accounting Officer. An Roinn Tailte. 29 May, 1970. |
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