BBCNorthern Ireland’s top auditor has criticised a government body for the way it rehired former staff let go under a redundancy scheme.
The Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) re-employed 11 people who had taken a package to leave the civil service.
Their earnings ranged from just over £3,000 to more than £68,000.
It is the second time the institute has been criticised over its accounting in six months.
AFBI provides a range of scientific services to government and the agri-food industry.
Not good practice
The Comptroller and Auditor General Kieran Donnelly said the issue raised a “significant issue of good governance within AFBI”.
“Rehiring former staff in these circumstances, in some cases only shortly after their departure under the voluntary exit scheme (VES), is not good practice and presents a very poor picture of AFBI’s ethics and employment practices.”
Eight of the staff were brought back in on scientific projects. The other three were in non-scientific roles.
AFBI had let a fifth of its workforce go under the exit scheme at a cost of £4.8m.
Taking back the 11 staff cost it a further £270,000.
Re-engaging former staff on agency contracts is not against the rules of the VES.
Little evidence
While it did contain some restrictions on rehiring, those rules did not apply to anyone engaged through an agency or as a consultant.
But the auditor general said “retiring and rehiring” in the public sector had been the subject of sustained criticism from the assembly’s Public Accounts Committee over several years.
Mr Donnelly said there was little evidence that AFBI had taken account of the committee’s view, although in one case, reservations had been expressed by an interim head of human resources.
He said the role played by a former senior official who had acted as the accounting officer was “particularly concerning” given that he had also been the subject of criticism in a previous audit report.
It said this was “outside accepted practice” in the managing of public money.
In a statement, AFBI said it accepted the findings of the NIAO report and acknowledged “that our procedures at the time should have been more robust.”
“We take our responsibilities towards good governance very seriously and have already strengthened a number of controls and processes to ensure that we meet the standards required from a public body in the future,” the statement said.