Almost one-third of the most senior auditors working in the state's spending watch dog, the Comptroller and Auditor General's office, are not qualified accountants, despite a 2008 report urging it not to employ unqualified staff by 2011.

Although the office has improved the ratio of qualified to unqualified senior auditors, this is only because five of its 12 senior deputy directors who were not qualified accountants quit the office last year under the government's incentivised early retirement scheme and have not been replaced.

The office, which is headed up by John Buckley, became embroiled in a political storm last week when it reported that the Central Bank had used taxpayers' money to pay the travel expenses for 52 spouses of bank employees on one trip abroad.

A subsequent clarification said that this was not for one trip but for several over a two-year period.

The 2008 report, conducted by international auditors, said it was "unacceptable" that six of the 12 deputy directors and 20 of the 40 senior auditors are not professionally qualified accountants.

The report also noted that the office was operating with 154 staff against an approved complement of 175 and that staff were working "under significant pressure".

"Our impression is that on some audits they are stretched to the point where the quality of audit achieved could be at risk," the report warned.

A spokesman confirmed to the Sunday Tribune that since the report the staffing complement has dropped even further to 142.

He added that nobody has been recruited in the last year because of the department of finance's ban on recruitment.

While the spokesman did not blame the reduced staffing for the Central Bank mistake, he confirmed that the office has put proposals to Finance on recruitment.