Reference is made to the articles ‘Auditor General finds gaps in 2014 festivities’ (January 28) and ‘PAC debates Auditor General’s report on OPM’s 2014 expenditure’ (timesofmalta.com, January 27). Both articles omit crucial matters as duly highlighted in the NAO’s report and the PAC meeting of January 27.

The inventory records of Villa Francia have last been audited in 2011 and, consequently, no further updates were carried out in the respective inventory database. Thus, as correctly stated in the NAO’s report, the inventory database had not been updated in 2012.

This contradicts this newspaper’s statement that the “inventory database had not been updated since June 2013 and key details were sometimes lacking as part of the asset description”. The NAO could not have been aware of these shortcomings since no audits were carried out on the OPM by NAO since 2009 and 2003 before that.

Editorial note: The sentence quoted by the Department of Information started with the words “The former’s” and the preceding paragraph in the article in question referred to two “locations the Directorate for Finance and Administration and Villa Francia.

Thus, the sentence mentioned by the Department of Information was in relation to the directorate not Villa Francia.