GAA club ‘could handle cash better than agency’

A GAA club could run its finances better than a Government agency, the Dáil’s public spending watchdog heard yesterday.

Fine Gael TD John Deasy levelled heavy criticism at officials from the Valuation Office when it appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in Leinster House.

The Valuation Office is the State property valuation agency, valuating commercial and industrial properties to calculate local authority rates payable.

The PAC was discussing financial shortcomings highlighted by the Comptroller and Auditor General’s 2002 report on the office.

Mr Deasy told the PAC: “There are pretty fundamental and basic mistakes going on. GAA clubs could handle their finances better.

He added: “It seems to be an agency that has been lost in the bowels of time. It badly needs modernisation. It just has been very badly run.”

The committee heard that an employee went on maternity leave with more than €6,600 in cash and cheques from the agency’s public office.

When the incident came to light, officials succeeded in recovering €4,528 but over €2,096 is still outstanding as some cheques went out of date.

The employee was later demoted from her position after an internal inquiry.

Mr Deasy criticised the leniency of the penalty and added: “It’s hard to be fired from the civil service, isn’t it?”

Valuation commissioner Aiden Murray said that it was difficult to establish if the incident, which had not been reported, could amount to theft because the employee had made some efforts to lodge the money.

Mr Murray insisted that new procedures meant one person would not be in charge of receiving, recording and lodging money from the public office.

Mr Deasy further claimed that only 36 specific valuation requests out of a batch of 457 received between 1998-2005 were completed by the Office.

He also pointed to an underspend in allocated administration funding of €2.2 million in 2002 and €2.8m in 2003.

He added: “They are staggering figures. All of this money hasn’t been used and at the same time a massive backlog of work is being left there.

“There must be some serious industrial relations problems going on there.”

The commissioner explained that allocated money was not being spent because of difficulties with the revaluation project.

Under this project, the Valuation Office is tasked with carrying out valuations of 160,000 commercial premises, the first since the 1870s.

In 2003, the project ran into industrial relations problems, and did not commence until November 2005.