‘Problems’ with scrutiny of councils’ spending

THE State’s financial watchdog yesterday warned there is a “problem” with the way hundreds of millions of euro is poured into local authority projects without full scrutiny.

Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) John Purcell made the remarks as a powerful Dáil committee expressed concern it had received “incomplete assurances” from the Government on council audits.

Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Michael Noonan TD called for greater scrutiny of how local authorities spend their multi-billion euro budgets.