Committee Reports > List of Committees > Dáil > 1990 > Committee of Public Accounts > Final Report - Appropriation Accounts 1988

APPENDIX 34

19 July, 1990.

Clerk to the Committee of Public Accounts,

Leinster House.

Dear Clerk,

I refer to the meeting on 3 May, 1990 of the Committee of Public Accounts at which the Accounting Officer for the Officer of the Attorney General was examined in regard to the Appropriation Accounts for 1988.

In the course of the examination the Chairman raised the issue of the cost effectiveness of a public prosecutions office, and asked that I let the Committee have the views of the Department of Finance on this matter.

It will be recalled that, at a subsequent meeting of the Committee on 28 June 1990 when the Accounting Officer of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions was being examined, the question was discussed in some detail and commented on by this Department’s representatives.

The position is that the Department of Finance has kept, and continues to keep, under review expenditure on counsels’ fees in the Attorney General’s Office and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and other Departments/Offices where relevant as well as alternative means of meeting the needs of the State in this area. As indicated at the examination of the Office of the Director of Public prosecutions the specific question of a public prosecutions office as opposed to existing structures for the conduct of prosecutions, is seen as a policy issue. Our understanding is that no such basic change is contemplated at the present time.

Yours sincerely,

NIALL MacSWEENEY,

Department of Finance.