Parliamentary oversight: Oireachtas committees and the Dáil Committee on Public Accounts in the twenty-first century

Abstract

Strong parliaments hold the government, its departments and the wider public administration to account. Such parliaments are built on strong and active committee systems. For a long time, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) was the only oversight committee consistently in place in the Houses of the Oireachtas. This article explains how the committee system has been gradually expanded and strengthened, and how its remit to oversee the actions of the government is wide. It explains the institutional factors that lead to the continued prominence of the PAC, including how it draws on the expert, independent reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General to conduct its oversight work, while noting that the PAC still faces the same challenges as other committees concerning a wide remit, finite resources and the multiple motivations of its membership. The work of the PAC is described and placed in the context of the financial scrutiny cycle which is being developed in the Houses of the Oireachtas. This is followed by a discussion of how the PAC manages its potentially wide remit to conduct ex post financial scrutiny of public expenditure, and the balance between what is referred to as ‘police-patrol’, rather than ‘fire-alarm’, scrutiny and the procedural changes which are designed to ensure that the PAC (with the authority of the Dáil) can examine and hold actors to account for the expenditure of any public money.