Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 16 November 2023
Public Accounts Committee
Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 11 - Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform
Vote 12 - Superannuation and Retired Allowances
Vote 39 - Office of Government Procurement
Vote 43 - Office of the Government Chief Information Officer
2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 5: Vote Accounting and Budget Management
9:30 am
Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Before we conclude, I will ask Mr. Moloney about the previous Secretary General, who intervened with the national broadband plan. He wrote a letter at the time to the Department about it. The letter subsequently came to the communications committee, of which I was the Vice Chair at the time. Among other things, he said that it was a major leap of faith and that the question of representing value for money arose. That was suggested in the letter, a two-page letter, as I recall. On the face of it, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform was more or less ignored on that occasion.
In the context of fairly significant projects, would Mr. Moloney intervene or put his neck out by issuing that kind of criticism, warning or analysis? Would that happen regularly? Would he say to a Department, by letter or whatever, that something needs more careful consideration? The former Secretary General basically outlined serious concerns about it, as I recall, in that letter.