Long delay to f ind chair for audit group

THE Department of the Taoiseach failed to replace the chair of an audit committee that oversees the Áras ‘slush fund’, more than 12 months after he died. The news emerged when an Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee hearing heard the President has an annual allowance of €317,000 that is not subject to audit. Secretary General at the department, Martin Fraser, told the PAC he intended to appoint a chair but it was not filled until this year. However, the Mail on Sunday can reveal that the chair, Dermot Gallagher, a former Secretary General at Foreign Affairs and overseas diplomat, died in January last year while still in position as audit chair. This means the position remained vacant for over 12 months, at a time when it hadn’t met at all since its inception in 2014. Yesterday a spokesperson for the Department of the Taoiseach claimed the reason for the delay was because ‘it took time to find a suitable person’. At the PAC hearing Marc MacSharry warned that it was important to make sure the fund is ‘being spent in the right way, that it’s not some kind of, even the perception of it, as some kind of slush fund’. President Michael D Higgins defended the existence of the fund at his campaign launch.