National Training Fund (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee and Remaining Stages Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-17 ============================================================ Victor Boyhan (IND), Agricultural Panel I welcome the Minister to the House. I support the National Training Fund (Amendment) Bill, which makes absolute sense. It is a short, concise Bill and we all know what it is about. I support the additionality of what Senator Tully is proposing, which also makes absolute sense. I do not see any issue with it. I happen to sit on the Joint Oireachtas audit committee. I have also sat on a number of State audit committees and am particularly interested in the corporate governance of our public expenses. It is very important that we have full accountability and transparency. We have had issues in the training sector and in the education sector in particular. There have been concerns regarding governance in the former vocational education committees, VECs, now the education and training boards, ETBs. I do not intend to go into that now but the Minister will be familiar with some of them. Anything that brings additionality and safeguarding to corporate governance is really important. I support amendment No. 1 moved by Senator Tully, which seeks to ensure that: Accounts of the Fund shall be prepared on an annual basis, in such form and ... in such manner as the Minister for Finance may direct, and the Comptroller and Auditor General shall examine, evaluate and certify every such account and a copy thereof, together with the report thereon of the Comptroller and Auditor General, shall be laid by the Minister before each House of the Oireachtas. I could not argue with any of that and do not think the Minister would either. It is better to be safer and surer and to have additional measures in place. This is a very simple request and it makes absolute sense. It is about confidence in the governance of these structures that are under the Minister's remit. I hope the Minister will be in a position to support this amendment. It is worthy and makes absolute sense. If we are to learn anything from past experience in the training sector in particular, but also in the education sector, it is better to be sure and to put these controls and governance measures in place. I commend this amendment and thank Senator Tully and her colleagues in Sinn Féin for tabling it. I urge the Minister to accept it but, ultimately, that is a matter for him. It makes absolute sense and would send a very clear message. What better person than the Comptroller and Auditor General and what better entity than the Department of Finance, both of which are stitched into this proposal? The report can be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas for scrutiny, if deemed necessary as a result of their comments or recommendations. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-17