Brennan Report - Department of Health and Children

Report of the Commission on Financial Management and Control Systems in the Health Servicecontrol and other relevant matters. The audit committee should report on a regular basis tothe health board. In addition, the audit committee should prepare an annual report on itsactivities for presentation to the health board. The minutes of the health board auditcommittee should be available to the audit committee of the Executive and a nominatedmember of the Executive board should have a right of attendance at health board auditcommittees.The audit committee and the board should take whatever steps are considered necessary tocarry out the board/audit committee functions to the highest standards of corporategovernance.The Department of Health and Children should prepare a charter for audit committees in thehealth sector that sets out their powers, functions, details of membership and procedures. Theaudit committee charter should ensure that the detailed external and internal audit process andthe consideration of external and internal audit reports should be functions of the auditcommittee.In making recommendations on the establishment, and workings, of audit committees, it isimportant that such recommendations be responded to in a meaningful way. Recent globalcorporate scandals have shown that the mere existence of an audit committee is not sufficient.A necessary condition to the successful operation of audit committees is that they adopt bestpractice in a substantive and meaningful way.The principles outlined for audit committees of health boards should extend to (i) theDepartment of Health and Children, (ii) agencies and other bodies under the remit of healthboards and (iii) other statutory agencies in the health services.When making the necessary legislative amendments, to facilitate the recommendationsthroughout this report, consideration should be given to making audit committees amandatory feature of boards’ revised governance arrangements.100