something goes horribly wrong.

And those reviewing Government Auditor Larry Dennis' latest Government Audit will be tempted to shrug their shoulders and say that there is little surprising here: The report is late (it is for the 1995 financial year) and it is incomplete, but they have been that way for more than a decade.

This is not Mr. Dennis' fault: He cannot conduct audits until he has the necessary financial data, and as he points out in his latest report, these often take years to appear and even then they are often incomplete.

Mr. Dennis is correct to be upset, and concerns about the quality of financial reporting on Government spending and revenue raising have been growing for some years.

It is true that some progress has been made. The Accountant General's office is now better staffed and some of the problems which Mr. Dennis has highlighted in past years have been corrected.

But there is still a long way to go. Mr. Dennis highlights three sets of accounts which had not been submitted for the 1995 year by June last year.

They were the Contributory Pension Fund, the Hospital Insurance Fund and the Public Service Superannuation Fund.

The absence of reports for the two pension funds -- the former for the general public and the latter for Government employees -- are particularly worrying.

Pension fund planning has to be done many years in advance and it is difficult, if not impossible, to do so without an accurate idea of where the funds stand now, let alone three years ago.

If it turns out the funds' unfunded liabilities are higher than any knew, then it could mean people being hit with much higher pension contributions -- or the size of the pensions having to be cut.

There is a similar problem with the Hospital Insurance Fund, which covers the basic medical needs of the very young and the very old. It is difficult to determine whether the fund can meet the needs of those who can help themselves without accurate accounting.

Mr. Dennis needs to keep hammering away at these points. The new Government can rightly point out that it did not make this problem, which occurred when the United Bermuda Party was in power, but it does have the responsibility now to make sure that its accounts are brought up to date.

Taxpayers deserve to know where their money has gone.