Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 6 December 2012

Public Accounts Committee

2011 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 6 - Financial Commitments under Public Private Partnerships
Chapter 16 - Central Government Funding of Local Authorities

1:40 pm

Photo of Eoghan MurphyEoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is not any other particular project - it has been a political hot potato since it began and we have discussed it in committee before. It has been an issue for previous Ministers and is an issue for this Minister. Again I am not talking about policy; I am talking about the actual project implementation on which we have committed money from the Exchequer both from the Department and through the Department to local government, from taxpayers through the local authority and we also have a representative involved in some way in the project. Ms Tallon has taken a keen interest in it. I have not said this is not the responsibility of councillors in Dublin City Council. I have not said they do not have a role in addressing this issue and I am not claiming that anyone is trying to shirk responsibility.

Part of my problem here, as I outlined before, is that I do not know who has responsibility. When Ms Tallon appeared before the committee previously, I asked her how much money the city manager could spend on this before being told to stop. When is that point reached? The financial management and governance of this project has been weak. We have had this discussion before with another authority whose representatives appeared before the committee. At that time we were discussing legacy issues that had occurred five or six years previously. We are now dealing with something that is active in our time while this committee sits and money is still being spent. In terms of the city manager's response, to which I will return because it is also dealt with in the audit report, it plans to continue to spend money on things such as client representative costs, which is of concern.

I now wish to go through some of those details to get a better idea of the city manager's perspective given that Ms Tallon has spoken to him on that point.

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