14 December 2001
The Northern Ireland Audit Office said several departments had wasted public money through poor financial controls, record keeping and project management.
The comptroller and auditor general for Northern Ireland reported that £50m of social security payments were fraudulent or made in error, with a further £300m not validated by documents.
The accounts for the Department for Employment and Learning were qualified as it wrongly paid almost £900,000 in European Union Peace grants because of administrative failings by intermediary funding bodies.
The largest error was discovered at the Roads Service Agency, which had undervalued its assets by £2bn. The executive also lost nearly £6m after cancelling an upgrade to the government payroll system.
Seamus Close, an Alliance member of the Assembly's Public Accounts Committee, said the audit report showed the extent of problems in Northern Ireland's financial administration.
'The number of references to weaknesses in financial control and documentary weaknesses is striking,' he said. He was particularly unhappy that the Social Security Agency had failed to act on his committee's recommendations against fraud from more than a year earlier. 'There has been a creeping laxity in the 30 years without an Assembly,' he said.
One senior official in the executive finance department admitted that financial controls had been 'lax' for many years. 'There's a recognition that things need to be tightened up,' he said.
PFdec2001
