Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 19 September 2024
Public Accounts Committee
Business of Committee
9:30 am
Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source
I thank the Chair for considering the correspondence that I and other members put forward in terms of seeking clarity on this. There is no Member of the House who could not say that over the past number of weeks this issue has been raised with them on multiple occasions.
Rightly or wrongly, the public believe that when works take place in Leinster House there is some political oversight of those works and of the costs associated with them. The facts put in the media so far seem to indicate this was a decision made entirely within the OPW itself, but we have to explore that. We have to find out who the decision-makers were. If there was no involvement or sign-off by elected Members on this, we must ask why. It is a flaw in the system that works can take place in this building with no Member or political oversight of that. As with other issues that have come before the Houses, we have to be proportionate, in that €335,000 in the context of what we deal with here week-in, week-out is a very small amount. It strikes at the heart of people's confidence in how the State spends money, however. Unless we are able to satisfy the concerns of people about this project, they will not have confidence in the State and those of any political colour spending money elsewhere.
I have a number of questions about the works themselves, including how they were requested and approved, who was involved, what the communications line was in all that, what tendering there was, if any, and why tendering might or might not have taken place. As to the works themselves, when one is onsite, one can see the shed was built, but there are also groundworks that appear to connect to four EV chargers immediately alongside. Is that included in the cost? If it was, why was that not detailed in the information released under freedom of information? If it is not included, is that additional spend? All of this must be teased out very quickly. I thank the Chair for suggesting we schedule a date, because the public want accountability on this. Doing it on the date he has suggested will mean we can inquire in full of all the OPW accounts that are coming before us. This is about process as much as an individual thing. People are really angry about this. Public representatives in the Houses are as angry as anybody else, because the people who pay the price at an election will be the politicians, who, it would appear, had no hand, act or part in this. I do not think any Member of the House is prepared to stand by anymore and allow officials to make decisions that come back and impact us. I will be careful what I say because we have to get to the bottom of the truth first, but people are angry and we have a right to investigate.
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