Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I congratulate the Labour Party on tabling the motion, which is timely and appropriate. The common factor in all the cases of chronic overruns and poor costings is that no Minister has ever taken responsibility. The former Minister for Finance, Mr. McCreevy, did not take responsibility for steamrolling through procedures to pursue the Punchestown project. The former Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Martin, did not read his brief on nursing home charges, nor did he heed warnings as he entered meetings. He has taken no responsibility for the potential bill of €2 billion, if the early estimates are realised, or the sum of €1 billion, according to the most recent estimates. According to him, it is not the Minister's job to read his brief or heed warnings. That is too complicated for a busy Minister who must fly around the place doing God knows what.

Similarly, baubles were offered at election time to curry votes, whether in regard to the medical card system or the pre-1953 pensions. They were produced as great strokes by Ministers but the costings were absolutely chronically wrong. However, no Minister has ever put his or her hand up to say "Sorry, I got that wrong, I have to take the hit".

However, there is a deeper issue than simply the cost overruns brought to our attention by the Comptroller and Auditor General. The problem is the Government does not focus on value for money. Over the past five years, the Government has increased spending by 66%, or €21 billion, but there has been little to show for it because the attention of Ministers has been diverted to political campaigning rather than delivering quality services.

In the 24 months prior to the last general election, the Government let all hell break out in spending, which increased by 48%. There was no shortage of money to throw at any project. Good habits built up over generations, particularly under the influence of spending EU funding wisely, were thrown out the window in a short few years to curry favour with the electorate, and procedures which had served us well for many years were steamrolled. During that period, priorities were blurred, analyses were perfunctory, management systems were swamped by Government spending proposals and no proper targets were set or measured, yet much of this emanated from the top.

One would expect high standards from the former Minister for Finance, but there is no mistaking he took political opportunities with the Punchestown project and the special savings incentive scheme and did not conduct the analysis that is expected. The Taoiseach did the same with his pet projects. He paid no heed to proper cost analysis while rosy projections were offered and commitments of public money were made, which went down the drain. How can it be expected that people down the line will take responsibility for spending money wisely when that approach is taken at the top?

We have witnessed the consequences of this approach. For example, Deputy McManus elaborated on the health service. Ministers boast that spending in this area has trebled, but the funding has not made it to the front line because the Ministers responsible have not attended to the needs of ordinary people and the money has been sucked into various bureaucratic scams. Four health boards were created in Dublin, where previously there was one, but it was then proposed to merge them under one national scheme. That was a major bureaucratic waste. An additional 3,500 staff were recruited into the hospital system but only 400 were nurses. Administrative grades in the health system expanded at four times the rate of grades employing front-line staff. People were not put in the positions where they were needed and the result is the chronic problems in accident and emergency departments.

This has been repeated in other areas, for example, crime. The smallest amount was invested in recruiting extra gardaí who are at the front line of the fight against crime. We wonder why there has been an explosion of violence on our streets and murders are committed on a regular basis. Decisions were made to downgrade the importance of the Garda. The tiniest increase in staff was sanctioned for the force. The State recruited 60,000 additional staff but the Garda only received sanction for fewer than 1,000, even though members were at the front line trying to deal with major problems. That is how money was misspent.

There is no willingness on the part of the Government to set itself performance indicators regarding issues that matter to people. It should outline how long it will take to deliver health care, what impact it will make on detection rates and what it will do about drug seizures, and it should meet those targets. Instead, the Government announces multi-million euro projects and says it will be judged by such projects and the sheer enormity of its vision. What makes a difference is the hard graft of making sure projects work and are delivered on time. The Luas will go down as a great example of how not to do this. It was originally costed at €300 million as part of an integrated public transport system but, following four years of Government dithering, it cost four times the original estimate and it has not achieved the integration and impact on the city's needs that it ought to have, given the sum invested.

Those are the consequence of not paying attention to value for money or conducting proper analyses before decisions are taken, and nobody is willing to stand up and take the hit when things go wrong. Someone must take the hit but it is always clear with the Government that Ministers will not take the hit.

It is 11 years since the strategic management initiative was launched. At its core was a commitment to evaluate public spending so that Governments would be much more careful about decisions on spending. It is an absolute scandal that the expenditure review initiative, a system that involves examining programme by programme what is delivered for each allocation, has been totally jettisoned by the Government. The initiative was to be operated on a three-year rolling basis so that every spending programme would be analysed to assess its impact. The initiative was abandoned and less then one in four of the spending evaluations occurred. Even where the spending evaluation took place, none of the lessons learned was applied in the programmes subsequently developed.

We come into the House year after year to debate Estimates, but no performance indicator is lined up against the major multi-million spending programmes we are asked to vote through. There is something rotten in the way public spending is approached and it is time the Government took responsibility for changing it, set performance indicators and started to kick ass to make sure things happen and reform is delivered. "Reform" is the one word the Government shuns on every occasion. Benchmarking offered an opportunity to kick-start reform of the public service but it was not taken. Opportunity after opportunity has been offered to face up to the changes that will deliver better quality, but whenever a line of resistance is met, the Government backs off.

We cannot go on like this. These have been the golden years of public spending. Exchequer resources have increased by between 8% and 10% per annum but they have not been used to set down a proper basis for a strong, quality public service. We will live to regret the way we have used the enormous wealth of these years. It is only at the Comptroller and Auditor General's level that we begin to see the wider shape of what has happened throughout the public service.

It is time for the Minister for Finance, who promised reform in the way budgeting is carried out, to step up to the plate and make real changes. Let Ministers, for the first time, be judged by the performance of spending in their areas. They should not step back, hide behind or blame public servants when things go wrong and simply cut ribbons and take praise when it is available.

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