Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 25 June 2025
Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach
Estimates for Public Services 2025
Vote 11 - Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation (Revised)
Vote 12 - Superannuation and Retired Allowances (Revised)
Vote 14 - State Laboratory (Revised)
Vote 15 - Secret Service (Revised)
Vote 17 - Public Appointments Service (Revised)
Vote 18 - National Shared Services Office (Revised)
Vote 19 - Office of the Ombudsman (Revised)
Vote 39 - Office of Government Procurement (Revised)
Vote 43 - Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (Revised)
2:00 am
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
I thank the Minister and Minister of State for their presentations and for managing the budget. I want to touch on one issue which is not being dealt with today, namely, the OPW, and the decision-making process. After the OPW has taken a decision on a project it then goes back to the Department of public expenditure. I know of one project, which predates the current Minister's term, where, as a result of a delay, the environmental impact study done for the project was out of date by the time the Department made the decision to go ahead with it. Therefore, it had to go back to the drawing board and that has delayed the project by three years. The information I am getting from people who are doing environmental impact studies is that in a lot of cases they end up doing anything up to three different studies. Every time a study goes in but by the time a decision is made, the study is out of date and they have to go back to the drawing board. What process has now been set up within the Department to make sure that does not arise again?
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