Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I want to revert to the issue of consultancy fees for a few minutes. One of the standout ones is Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, with a reported €2.1 million in consultancy fees, and then through freedom of information we read that it is actually €86.1 million. I want to raise this with Mr. Moloney in a helpful way. When one sees a heading like business-as-usual outsourcing, and when one hears the term "business as usual" over the years at meetings or whatever else, it generally raises eyebrows. It is probably not the best description or term to be using but, in a helpful way, I will say this to Mr. Moloney. I will give him a few examples.

In 2021, TII gave Laois County Council - I am not trying to be parochial here; it is a concrete example of the type of absolute nonsense that is going on - €200,000 to install a footpath and some public lighting on the Cork Road in Durrow, County Laois. It was badly needed for new estates that needed to be serviced, and there was also a road safety issue with traffic calming to be installed. I raised it with the area engineer, who is highly qualified and very competent. He said that it may not be done, or it could be a year to two years before anything happens. I asked him why, given that we have the money. The county council got the money and left it to the competency of the engineer to deliver it within a year. Then it had to go out to consultants. I had a discussion with him. He is a very good engineer, by the way. I asked him why it had to go to consultants. He said TII insists on it. I look forward to seeing what the final bill is for the consultancy work on this project because involves a footpath going to the Sean Doire housing estate, and the new estate that is being built there as part of that, along with public lighting and a zebra crossing. This money comes from TII. The Department will ultimately sanction this, and it goes to TII. As sure as we are sitting here, I guarantee that this could take €50,000 or €60,000 of the cost. There are actually some jobs where the consultancy fees are more than the actual work done to deliver to the contracts.

I will give Mr. Moloney another example. Laois County Council wants to put in place a local bus service in Portlaoise, which is gridlocked. I think we have more people living there now than there are in Kilkenny city. Everything goes into the middle of the town. The local councillors and the council, all clever people, want to reduce car use in the town. Where I live on one side of town, it is 7 km to the other side, so there is a need for local bus service, and this has been identified. This would involve identifying the key population areas, where bus stops could be located easily, and routes. Lo and behold, TII is funding this, and it is out to public consultation, and there are consultants involved. For the life of me, why do consultants have to be brought in at every stage of this, to design the routes that are needed in the town? We have a road design section in the county council staffed by competent people. We have councillors who are elected, who know the area inside out. It would appear that to even hang a gate, there is an insistence from Government Departments about involving consultants. I am saying this to Mr. Moloney very directly because I do not expect him to know all the minutiae of what is happening. This is where the costs are piling up, and common sense is out the window. If a gate has to be hung, or two gate pillars put up, there are consultants brought in at every hand's turn. It is a huge industry.

Let me give Mr. Moloney another example, which is housing. We have the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage here regularly. It is back in again soon, and I will raise this every time the Secretary General comes in. About 20 years ago we decided that every local authority home was going to be architecturally designed externally, not internally by the council architects, engineers or technicians, which used to be the case - and by the way, they were easier to maintain. I am told by senior staff in various county councils that the cost of this work - the outside consultancy and the architectural work - is adding over 11% to the cost of housing. We are trying to keep down the cost of housing but those are three examples I can rattle off the top my head. It is absolute insanity what is going on. The first thing is to bring in consultants. I am not against bringing in expert advice but I can tell Mr. Moloney of occasions when we have had expert advice. One of them was the waste management plans back in the 2000s. Each county council was instructed to get involved in this and draw up waste management plans. There were eight regional plans, as I recall it, and they never went ahead but a consultancy firm got a pile of cash to go around. Deputy Murphy is in a different area from me, and she probably saw a copy-and-paste job of what I saw at the time for incinerators all over the country, among other things. It never happened, and should not have happened. It did not need to happen.

The point I am making to Mr. Moloney is that there is this absolute fix on bringing in consultants through everything. I ask Mr. Moloney if his Department will talk to some of the people in TII and some of the other Government bodies. He might like to respond to me by telling me why, in order to install a footpath and public lighting, a county council with a road design section, an area engineer, technicians, very good overseers and supervisors - all highly qualified people - would need consultants to design that? I have asked this question and I cannot get an answer to it. I want Mr. Moloney to give me an answer as head of the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform.