Analysis: Hasty plans and politicians pushing pet projects prove costly, writes Cliff Taylor, Economics Editor
The State spends and collects more than €30 billion each year. So it's perhaps little surprise that a few million euro are wasted here and there. The job of the Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG) is to examine State spending and revenue collection, and to identify where things have gone wrong, or could be done better.
This year's report identifies the usual batch of instances where money was wasted or where programmes were not properly controlled.
The C&AG also puts the Revenue Commissioners through their paces. How they must grit their teeth in Revenue HQ in Dublin Castle when the Comptroller's staff walk across from their adjacent offices for their annual inspection.
The C&AG, Mr John Purcell, does not draw any overall conclusions or recommendations; that is not his job. However, reading the latest annual report it is clear there are two common themes to where things go wrong: where new "initiatives" are introduced, often in a hurry; and where politicians get heavily involved in pushing projects.
Often the two go together, creating - predictably - an even bigger mess.
A case in point was the handling of flood relief. The C&AG examines the scheme put in place for Kilkenny, flooded by the River Nore in 1995, which was a monument to poor planning and costs over-runs.
Meanwhile, the arrangement with the Irish Red Cross to compensate those hit by flooding in 2002 in the East Wall/Ringsend areas of Dublin, the centre of Cork city, Baltray in Louth and Mornington in Meath was undertaken without any written deal between the Government and the Red Cross, or proper procedures. For example, there was no proper system to ensure that those with insurance cover didn't get money.
It was politically popular - and quite possibly justified - to bring forward such schemes. After all, politicians might not get re-elected if they took the approach of the late Noel Carroll, who as Dublin Corporation spokesman famously told those flooded by the Dodder after Hurricane Charlie that if they lived by a river, they could expect to get their feet wet every 50 years. But hasty political promises come at a cost to the Exchequer.
Similar politically inspired speed was shown in pushing through marina projects in December 2000, particularly those in Kenmare and Cahirsiveen.
The amount of money spent was relatively minor, but the point of interest reading the report is how a direction from ministers can still lead to the normal procedures and checks being ignored.
The message from the top from the start was that the marina projects were to get "priority treatment". And clearly they did.
More costly problems emerged in the introduction of other more major initiatives - penalty points and electronic voting. This highlights the difficulty encountered in planning and implementing change or major new programmes, a key issue facing those managing large public spending programmes.
If the system is set up to operate one way, then the knock-on consequences of introducing a system such as penalty points are huge, covering legal, technical, administrative and human resource issues.
And the problems can be fundamental. For example, towards the end of last year almost half the films received from static and video cameras were "spoiled" in one way or another and could not be used.
As for electronic voting, almost €50 million was spent and, as the report puts it, the value of this will depend on whether the system is ever used in future.
Some mistakes are bound to happen, but does the C&AG report point to wider problems? Certainly value for money is now on the tip of every politician's tongue when discussing public spending.
The report points to two separate categories of concern: one where money is simply wasted, the other where poor planning and execution leads to cost over-runs - or poor service delivery, or both.
Public servants could justifiably argue that the report ignores the many areas where programmes operate effectively. However many instances in recent years - from the Luas, to the long-promised second terminal at Dublin Airport, to the hospital wards built but not yet opened - point to the difficulty of planning and delivering new projects and programmes.
The C&AG can continue pointing to the problems after they occur.
But it will be up to the new Cabinet and the senior officials supporting them to try to stop them happening in the first place.
