David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will come back to the consultancy spend as we have raised this at a high level in the context of how much money the State or organisations funded by it are spending on consultancy. It is similar to what we are doing with other matters and when we see consultancy spend we should seek a breakdown of what exactly the money is being spent on. We must examine this a bit more closely.

There is a lot of change management within the Civil Service. I imagine that there is a great deal of commonality involved when change is taking place. When money is being spent on strategic and organisational restructuring, that happens as a matter of routine across many Departments and organisation. There are examples of it when very large changes are being made. For example, in the context of technological universities, a lot of change management has to take place in order to merge two institutes to become a new university. There were issues around the level of consultancy being used to fund all of that. However, there is a broader point about where lessons can be learned and how they can be applied. There are also lessons regarding consistency, guidelines and in-house expertise.

The point we made at the previous meeting is that it is far too easy for organisations funded by the taxpayer to reach out to private consultants or to get consultancy firms to carry out some work before decisions are made. However, it is the same firms doing the same work, often with the same recommendations. There is a need to examine this in terms of whether we are getting value for money and if enough is being done by the line Departments that fund these organisations to ensure that better direction is given and that better guidelines are in place in the context of how transition and change are managed. There is a lot of money involved. The question I asked on the previous occasion was whether it is possible to get a figure for, say, 2018. How much did the taxpayer spend on consultancy? The clerk to the committee is shaking his head. It might be difficult to get that figure but we should be able to get it. Every Department should be able to come back to us and tell us how they fund the different organisations and what they spend on consultancy. Is it listed in their accounts?