Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 17 October 2012

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform

2013 Allocations for Public Expenditure - Finance Vote Group: Discussion with Minister for Finance

3:15 pm

Photo of Michael NoonanMichael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No. I have already provided the costings in that regard by way of response to a parliamentary question tabled by the Deputy. Consultancy costs vary. Where the required expertise is not available in-house, a consultant is engaged. The Department is dealing with enormous amounts of money and huge issues. Departments are by and large composed of generalists rather than people with refined and specific expertise. Where expert advice is required, consultants are engaged. If we are engaging consultants on a banking issue, we usually try to transfer the costs of doing so to the bank. The cost of some consultancy does fall to the taxpayer. For example, in regard to legal advice, the general principle is that it is better to buy it in when needed rather than have a whole range of legal expertise in-house, which would be only used occasionally. Even though the unit cost appears high when it is bought in, the cost of having a legal department in every Department would be higher. That is the approach taken in that regard.

On secondment, there are currently ten people in the Department on secondment from the private sector, seven of whom are pro bono in that the companies from which they come pay their salaries and other costs such as pensions and so on. The situation with regard to the remaining three varies, depending on whether they are on permanent or temporary secondment.

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