Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I asked Mr. McKeon about this issue because, obviously, the Department wants to judge the expenditure that has been set out of some €67 million against what is being saved. The back page of the Irish Examineron Tuesday covered Mr. McKeon's letter to the committee on that issue, and the article also featured a very fetching picture of Mr. McCarthy. It mentioned the business case. The line that caught my eye was Mr. McKeon's statement that the total fully allocated costs of the project to date come to €67.7 million but a large portion of these costs would have been incurred even if the public services card had not been introduced. Mr. McKeon stated that this was because the Department always sought to authenticate the identity of people claiming its services in any event. When I read that line, the words of another Secretary General, who appeared before the committee, came flooding back because they were nearly exactly the same as those uttered by the Secretary General of the Department of the Taoiseach, Martin Fraser, when he spoke about the infamous strategic communications unit. Following the scrapping of the spin unit, Mr. Fraser pivoted and said the Department of the Taoiseach would have spent the money in any case because all the guys were working in various press offices across various Departments and nobody lost their job afterwards. The two things do not tally because there was, of course, a cost in establishing the strategic communications unit. I put the same point to Mr. McKeon. On the one hand, he is saying the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection would have incurred the costs in any event but then talks about the savings. I think he alluded to savings of €20 million. What is the real cost? Obviously, the real cost is €67.7 million but Mr. McKeon is trying to say there are counterfactual matters. What is the actual net cost of establishing the services and what have been the real savings identified to date?