The Minister for Finance has made it clear to his ministerial colleagues that he expects them to prudently manage money allocated to their Departments.
Mr McCreevy told the Dáil last night that whatever problems existed relating to the quality and quantity of public services, money alone was clearly not the answer.
"If it were, we would have solved all our problems by now. Greater attention needs to be devoted to securing value for money through more effective control and management of public expenditure.
"Ultimately, it is a matter for each Minister to manage within his or her total allocation next year and to secure the best possible value for money from that allocation."
He announced that, starting next year, he intended publishing the yearly spending profiles which were submitted to his Department at the start of the year. This, he said, would allow members of the House and commentators to make a more informed assessment of the pattern of spending as shown by the Exchequer returns which were issued by his Department shortly after the end of each month.
He said he would continue to submit monthly expenditure management reports to Government, reporting on emerging spending and revenue trends.
"The success of any expenditure management system is crucially dependant upon a share recognition by each Minister and his/her secretary general of the need to ensure that appropriate financial control systems are in place and are functioning effectively."
Mr McCreevy was opening the debate on the Government's estimates published last Thursday. The House will vote on the measure today.
He said that each Department's financial control system should include appropriate risk assessment measures and contingency provisions.
He would be asking, he added, that a review of spending patterns over the past five years be undertaken as part of the process of assessing the risk of future expenditure over-runs on particular programmes.
Depending on the outcome of the risk assessment measures, he expected each Minister to agree with the accounting officer a contingency amount within the 2003 allocation to be held back from specific allocation to cater for unforeseen pressures emerging as the year progressed.
Defending the Estimates, Mr McCreevy claimed that the media debate had been "littered with misconceptions and inaccuracies." Some newspapers, he said, had referred to a planned increase in spending next year of two per cent compared to a 20 per cent increased this year.
"Neither of these figures is correct." He said that while last week's abridged volume provided for a 2 per cent increase in spending, he had made it clear that it did not include any provision for social welfare rate increases, benchmarking or any other pay increases.
He would deal with those issues on Budget day, he added.
The Fine Gael spokesman on finance, Mr Richard Bruton, insisted that it was the Minister's job to heed the warning signs of the State's public finances over the past two years.
"It was he who built his political reputation by his dissent from the reckless budgets of Charlie Haughey. However, when the test came, he did nothing." There was not a single sign of serious reform to deliver better value for money, he added.
The Labour spokeswoman on finance, Ms Joan Burton, said that people buying their own homes would remember November 14th as the day Mr McCreevy "lit a bonfire under their dreams, while the property speculators let off fireworks as yet another boon from their friend Mr McCreevy" .
Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (SF, Cavan-Monaghan) said the estimates represented a programme of cuts, and "they promise a Budget which will totally negate the commitments made by the two Government parties before the general election".
He accused the Government of effectively tearing up its own programme.
