Appropriation Accounts 2002
Dáil Éireann provides money for the ordinary services of Government department and offices. Expenditure is provided for under ‘Votes’, with one or more covering the functions of each department or office. At the end of each financial year, each department or office is required to prepare an account, known as the appropriation account, for each voted service administered by it. The statutory requirement is for the appropriation account to provide details of the outturn for the year against the amount provided by Dáil Éireann, based on the cash amounts of payments and receipts.
The Comptroller and Auditor General performs the audit of the appropriation accounts for the previous financial year prepared by the departments and offices. Upon completion of the audit, he is obliged to attach to each account a certificate stating whether, in his opinion, the account properly presents the receipts and expenditure related to the Vote concerned and to refer to any material case in which
- a department or office has failed to apply expenditure recorded in the account for the purposes for which the appropriations made by the Oireachtas were intended, or
- transactions recorded in the account do not conform with the authority under which they purport to have been carried out.
He also draws attention to any material case in which the statement on internal financial control prepared by the Accounting Officer is misleading or inconsistent with other information of which the Comptroller and Auditor General is aware from the audit of the appropriation accounts.
