Editorial: The Audit office is an organisation that might need more money to help ensure that public spending is properly scrutinised

You almost could not make this up. The Northern Ireland Audit Office is worried about its budget.​

The NI Audit Office’s (NIAO) chief operating officer Rodney Allen told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that its recent budget allocations were not sustainable, as we report on page six of the newspaper edition (click here).

The NIAO has done outstanding work scrutinising the spending of public money across Northern Ireland.

This newspaper has been a long-time advocate of fiscal responsibility in NI. For all the complaints about lack of funding, substantial sums are spent inefficiently at best, stupidly or extravagantly at worst. But making prudent savings might in fact mean the an organisation such as the NIAO needs more funding, not less.

In much the way that Northern Ireland having a Fiscal Council, as it now does, to examine the NI budget and how the massive amounts of public money in the province are spent, is more expensive than not having such a council, it is still important that that expense is supported.

Think of it another way: a government might in fact trim an unpopular tax rate and then increase the number of tax inspectors it hires to make sure that people do in fact pay the lower rate. It is spending to ensure fair enforcement of the lower tax.

The NIAO says its budget baseline was cut by NI Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris but it is only fair to note that it has other challenges such as recruiting staff, not all of which can be resolved by money alone. Even so, it is not clear that Stormont gets some of these points. There is no real talk of trimming the vast sums spent on, for example, public sector pensions or ruinously costly fees for lawyers in legacy cases.

Yet an NIAO that has produced vital work over the years, pinpointing incompetence, waste and even near fraud, might not be able to carry out its work properly in a society, NI, that is so in need of it.