Education Ministry civil servants responsible for settling claims made by the Curia are reimbursing the Church for expenses claimed by its schools without properly verifying invoices, the Auditor-General complained on Tuesday.

Although payments were made against invoices, the invoices often lacked sufficient detail for thorough checks to be carried out, Auditor-General Charles Deguara told the Public Accounts Committee.

It seemed civil servants were not concerned with spending, so long as they remained within the budget allocation for the year, he said.

Since 2009, government funding of Church schools has almost doubled, even though there has only been a three per cent increase in the student population.
The 2017-2018 academic year saw Church schools cost the taxpayer €63 million, up from €32 million between 2008-2009. 

Mr Deguara said that following an audit by his office, the ministry section had committed itself to making sure that proper checks were carried out in future. A follow-up audit will be carried out in two or three years’ time.

€3 billion owed 'have no chance of being collected'

During the committee meeting, which discussed audits by the Audit Office in the past year, it also emerged that the government is owed €3 billion in arrears, most of which, according to the Auditor-General, “have no chance of being collected.”

Some of the arrears - mostly comprising income tax, VAT, and customs dues - date back decades, but, for a variety of reasons, no action was taken to write off the irretrievable amounts from the government books.

Opposition MP Beppe Fenech Adami asked why the remaining amount remained uncollected. Mr Deguara blamed lack of enforcement but said questions needed to be directed to the relevant departments.  

These figures were presented to the PAC as part of the annual report of the National Audit Office, which went into detail about the tens of audits carried out each year, and which generally went unnoticed.

However, the Auditor General told MPs that the work carried out by his office was ultimately useless unless the Committee had the will to hold ministries to account, and to require them to carry out the required checks.

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