Pensions being received by people who paid social contributions before 1953 are now costing €135 million a year - although the Government first believed they would cost just €9 million.
The decision to go ahead with the payments was made by the cabinet in late 1999, giving the Department of Social and Family Affairs just weeks to prepare, the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee found.
"The time allowed for the department to develop the estimate was too short. The number of eligible persons resident abroad, particularly in the UK, was grossly underestimated," reported the committee, which examines Government spending.
Social and Family Affairs estimated that just 3,000 would qualify, but the number rose to 34,500 by the end of 2000, though it has since fallen away to 28,000.
Meanwhile, the PAC said it could not decide if an effort to cut hospital waiting lists in 1993 was worthwhile because health board and hospital records were so poor. Since 1993, €290 million has been spent on the waiting lists initiative, though "there was a lack of traceability in the hospitals visited as to how the funds were used".
By 2002, almost half of the annual spending on the programme was being used to pay for staff who had been, or were about to be, made permanent.
"This restricted the flexibility to channel funds to the most problematic areas," said PAC, in its fifth interim report on the 2002 Comptroller and Auditor General's report.
The programme was introduced to ensure that no adult spends more than 12 months on a waiting list, or six months for a child for selected procedures.
Hospital beds in the Dublin area were almost never left unoccupied, the PAC found.
"This means that there is little or no flexibility within the area to cope with the waiting lists.
"One of the problems is the availability of nurses to support the opening of beds. If beds are closed and staff let go it is very difficult to reverse that trend in the short term," the committee found.
Meanwhile, the developer which has taken over the construction of the Cork School of Music is expected to make a return of 11.5 per cent on the deal. Hochtief took over the contract this year from UK builders Jarvis, and signed an agreement with the Department of Education and Science in September.
"That is a very high rate of return for a public-private partnership at a time of low interest rates," said the chairman of PAC, Fine Gael TD Michael Noonan.
"The arguments surrounding PPPs are still open. It does not look that the State got value for money in the Cork deal," Mr Noonan added.
The school was originally expected to cost €12.7 million under a plan drafted in 1999, but the lowest bid received in 2001 was €58.8 million. The Department of Finance should keep PPP contract costs in line with "the level of risk in the projects" to ensure that developers do not get unacceptable profits.
The delays in getting the project off the ground, which led to large bills for temporary accommodation, were caused partly by a lack of co-operation between the Departments of Finance and Education.
However, the Cork School of Music "was treated as a learning device for PPP projects and important lessons emerged that have been taken up in Department of Finance guidance for other projects.
"The new Cork School of Music will provide a prestigious third-level music school for the ongoing needs of Cork in the years ahead," said the PAC, which includes Cork South Central Green Party TD Dan Boyle.
