§ Mr. FIELD (Dublin, St. Patrick)To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether, seeing that the Comptroller and Auditor General keeps, at the head office of the Exchequer and Audit Department, duplicate records of payments on accounts other than the Chancery Suitors' Fund Account, he will now furnish a full statement, showing the various accounts on which such duplicate records are kept.
(Answered by Mr. Runciman.) I am at a loss to understand this further Question in view of the explicit Answer which I gave to the hon. Member on the 13th ultimo, namely, that duplicate records are not kept except in the case of the accounts of the Chancery Suitors' Fund. The purport of the hon. Member's Questions relating to the methods of audit adopted by the Comptroller and Auditor-General is not clear, but if he is of opinion that the absence of a permanent local staff to conduct the audit of Irish accounts in Ireland results induplication of work I am informed that the impression is entirely erroneous.