Four members of the powerful Dail Public Accounts Committee, led by chairman Jim Mitchell, were in Australia this week for a series of meetings with their counterparts on the other side of the world.
The committee wants to learn how other parliamentarians investigate shady financial practices involving state and semi-state bodies. The PAC's interest stems from its inquiries into bogus non-resident bank accounts and the evasion of DIRT tax. The committee was given increased powers by the Dail to enable it to compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents and allowing the Comptroller and Auditor General to examine its files on the revelations last autumn that the revenue had made a secret £14 million settlement with AIB for a fraction of the money due in DIRT tax.
In Australia, a country where sleaze has raised its head not infrequently, our parliamentarians hoped to learn a few new tricks for ferreting out information others would like to keep secret. The three members who travelled with Mitchell and who are due back in Dublin tomorrow are FF's Sean Ardagh, FG's Bernard Durkan and Labour's Pat Rabbitte. They visited Sydney and Melbourne.