Tens of thousands of euro kept in unsecure schools

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Persistent risks existed within schools and centres that were under the CCVEC’s remit because too much cash was being kept on site and money was not being promptly lodged or properly accounted for.

Management at CCVEC were forced to intervene in a number of facilities when money was not transferred quickly enough to central funds.

Auditors said this exposed CCVEC to unacceptable risks of losses, and raised security issues.

In one case, a school was pulled up after banking records showed it had 12 times more cash on its premises that it was insured for.

This was all lodged in one day and finance officials summoned its management to address "the seriousness of the level of bad practice in the school".

Three months earlier, a teacher in another part of the county was ordered to repay more than €2,100 after he did not lodge money raised from students when he was supposed to. The money was subsequently washed away in the devastating floods of Nov 2009.

The lost amount was stopped directly from the teacher’s salary under a two-year payback deal. He agreed to this deal after CCVEC deemed that procedures for taking and promptly lodging money had been breached.

There was no suggestion the teacher misappropriated the money. Nonetheless, the CCVEC criticised the fact that the sum was not banked and secured immediately.

In April 2010, one school lodged almost €50,000 to CCVEC central account in one day. This was collected over a period of three days and most of it (€31,041) came from a collection for a book scheme.

It was held in two safes on site. There was no insurance cover for such an amount of money.

The school told CCVEC that, given time constraints, staff did not have access to a bank.

But in an audit report for CCVEC, its head of finance took issue with the school’s explanation.

"The major item here is that monies received must be lodged promptly and that is not occurring. Risk of loss is too great," the report said.

The problem was raised by the Comptroller and the auditor general as one of a series of recommendations to its 2009 accounts, which were laid before the Oireachtas at the end of last year.

In response, CCVEC recognised that the failure to lodge money promptly was a risk and it had decided to monitor all lodgements to ensure the school managers were now following procedures.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, February 07, 2012