Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 25 September 2024
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Engagement with Office of Public Works
1:30 pm
Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source
Okay, that is just basically telling people what OPW is doing, the upfront part of it. We would expect that if the OPW were to tell the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission that it was planning to build a bike shed for €336,000 - I will come to that number again because the OPW actually expected it to cost a good deal more than that - the commission would ask those in the OPW if they were off their head. That is what would happen. Really, that is a secondary protection. In respect of the OPW, which spends hundreds of millions if not billions of euros of taxpayers money, we need to know it is getting value for money because we cannot be told of every single project it is spending money on. I am concerned that Mr. Conlon is saying that the processes and procedures were followed and that the only thing the OPW would have done differently would have been to ensure other people were informed of the cost. It seems this bike shed would have gone ahead even with what we know now.