Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The fixed-price contract provided a degree of comfort from a budgeting perspective in respect of the cost. Lessons must be learned from that because there are other projects that are of a similar nature, for example, the payroll system in the Department of Education.

The implementation partner is Accenture. An article was published last October in the Irish edition of The Times. I will read a paragraph from the article.

This is a reference to Accenture, a management consultancy hired to implement the project. A review of the project by EY, released last year under freedom of information legislation, found "the relationship with Accenture was not on a good footing from the beginning". This led to "delays" and "cost overruns".

What were the delays and cost overruns caused by the relationship? Is Accenture still the implementation partner?