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

Thank you for holding this correspondence over, a Chathaoirligh. I will start with the correspondence from Mr. Moloney. The second paragraph of it states that the Department can confirm that the pay and pensions division, as it was then, of the Department sought data sets and other relevant information from Benefacts, which were used in the compilation of an internal report estimating the potential cost implications arising from a claim for pension provision for community employment supervisors and assistant supervisors. What I am trying to establish is that there was a value and that Departments themselves used this. I am very determined not to let this go. This is the report that was done from that data set. The Department did not then end up having to employ expensive consultants because that information was available to it from a source.

The second document relates to the Department of the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, and what was expected in respect of the replacement for Benefacts. The correspondence states of the project background that the high-level purpose of the exercise is to explore options for a funding platform that would reduce the administrative burden on grantees and funders as well as providing a single source of truth and source of analysis on State-funded community and voluntary grantees and the investment being made in those organisations. We already had that. The last paragraph states that any decision to move forward would also involve a significant ICT development project and would require a whole-of-government approach as well as being subject to Government approval and to the conditions set out in the public spending code. The Indecon report into this whole issue recommended that we not dispense with one database in advance of the other being created. It gave us a figure as to what it costs to set up and maintain such a database. Essentially, now we have dispensed with one and are replacing it with something else. The last paragraph refers to any decision to move forward; it does not actually state that the Department will move forward. If we are talking about value-for-money issues, this one stands up in lights in that a decision was made to dispense with something that had demonstrated value for money when there was going to be a very significant cost to replacing it.

I think those items of correspondence pretty much underline that. I suppose we are going to get more information that builds up a picture. It may well be that, at the end of the year, we capture that so as to get an overview of exactly what will happen, what led up to it and what happened in terms of dispensing with Benefacts. Cataloguing that alone would be an example of bad decision-making. The Indecon report stated that having the information I refer to is essential to good governance. We are now going to be missing a piece of critical information. The people who made this decision really should be asking why it was made. We need to have the answers in relation to the business case.