*One* person?
One person can make a €3.6 billion mistake in a NATIONAL budget?
What kind of amateur-hour operation are the DoF running?

Think I made the same mistake in my Junior Cert Business paper

A ‘humiliating schoolboy error’ WTF! No smacks or dunces cap for that particular scholar no doubt.

Why did it take the NTMA 15 months to send a second e-mail!!! Pass the buck, from NTMA to Finance, then blame “one person”. Disgraceful!!! They should be all ashamed!!!

The worlds biggest circus run by the worlds highest payed clowns!

Are these the officials that retire on over 700,000 plus severence packages

Not being vindictive here but when are we going to see somebody get punished for these types of mistakes?

Why is there a need for a report firstly it was a schoolboy error and secondly someone ignored an email, sack both and hire properly educated folk who can read emails and complete accounts, simple.

The person or persons responsible for this massive error should be fired. No ifs buts or anything else.

Who’s bank account was it resting in all this time the money had to be somewhere.

There’s something really fishy about this, how can no one notice missing €3.6 bln??? I know it’s next to nothing these days, but come on!

How much more is there missing that we don’t know about I wonder?

At least its ?3,600,000,000 that we dont have to borrow from europe. Thats a lot in tax take ….

Errors of this nature only happen when it’s to someone’s benefit…..

When I was in school and college double entry was drummed into us during accounting. “All the debits must equal all the credits”. Therefore, if the dept posted an extra credit (liability) where was the debit (expense) posted. A mistake as basic cannot and should not be made. The only way I can see this happening is that the dept of finance are keeping the national accounts on spreadsheets and are ignoring the basic principals of double entry bookkeeping. Who reconciled the ‘intercompany accounts’ and signed off that these were correct? The whole thing is ridiculous.

maybe some one had plan’s for it. Some one had to know it was there. All the one anyway sure its only going to be giving to fat cat bankers, irish people will still be cut to hell in 6 weeks time.

Have these people ever heard of a “trial balance”. A basic accounting check which would have highlighted this mistake at the beginning. Arrogant incompetent fools. God help us and it’s these same gobs….ts who are now preparing our future budgets. It’s as well we have the IMF keeping an eye on them.

These people are not fit to work in Fas

I agree Noonan should be sacked along with a host of others over this mess. Listening to him in the Dail this evening trying to explain the mistake it was pure drivel, there was absolutely no sense or meaning to what he was saying. If I had made an error in my books when I was self employed I would have been hammered with fines by the government.

So if the dept. of finance made “an error” then the head of the dept.
I.E. Michael Noonan should be held accountable and therefore should resign

Was watching BBC news when they broadcast ‘breaking news’ the Irish have found they are better off by x amount after finding €3billion+ due to an accounting error que: sniggering smiles and jokes about wish I could find that amount down the back of my sofa! Talk about the thick Paddy jokes of the past! For a country that is already a laughing stock for it’s crooked banks, corrupt politicians, lax regulation and non conviction of white collar crime and general incompetence in all matters financial this just adds to the sense of cluelessness that seems to prevail in the higher echelons of the govt., the ‘civil service’ (top end) and particularly the DoF. Cowen and Lenihen were regarded abroad as pretty useless anyway (voted worst finance minister at one point) and when you think about how the financial crisis was handled in Ireland, it is clear to everyone that they were way out of the depth. This is embarrassing and just shows how badly the state is served by these people.

Sooo, there’s €3.6 billion to spare?! Jays, maybe this year’s Budget won’t be so bad after all. *I wish*

Heads must roll for this ! But again they probably won’t

@ Ed Appleby

Read above comments, we didnt FIND 3.6 Billion Euro, we noticed that we OWE 3.6 Billion euro less than originally thought, we didnt actually find
3.6 Billion in cash, just lying around.

@Daniel Personally I see the hands of the Illuminatii and the Priuré de Sion behind all this. I heard they had s meeting with Gay Mitchell at the parish house in Limavaddy on October 12th. Of course its only rumour,…

We should give the human errer a clap on the back!!

Down with civil servants. Replace them with monkeys. No mistakes were ever made in Irish banks of any equivalent magnitude.