Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I congratulate the Comptroller and Auditor General once again on producing an excellent report, which is unique from a Government viewpoint in that there is no spin in it whatsoever. It is straight up, fair, refreshing and tells it as one sees it. It is important to take this opportunity to debate the report but, sadly, it has become a litany of Government failure and waste, which we are witnessing once again this year. This time the taxpayer was asked to stump up double the cost of a site to build a prison, involving a hit of over €15 million. The taxpayer was also asked to stump up the cost of 30,000 phantom medical card holders. The Government promised to provide 200,000 extra medical cards but this is the only sign so far of any extra cards. Over a period of years, taxpayers have had to stump up €20 million for 30,000 people who did not exist.

In addition, we have had the continuing saga of integrated ticketing, which Deputy Olivia Mitchell will deal with later. It is the longest running saga of its kind. Sadly, a lot of taxpayers' money has been lost week after week, amounting to €10 million already on that project alone.

All these projects, which have gone off the rails, are distinguished by the fact that they are pet projects of Ministers and driven by ministerial demands for action. There is a problem with Ministers who clearly have an appetite for headlines when such projects are announced, yet do not seem to follow through by ensuring the systems put in place will deliver such projects efficiently and punctually.

As we have heard from his colleague, I am sure the Minister will say this is a drop in the ocean and does not matter but I do not accept that for one minute. This does matter because it goes to the heart of the way in which public money is spent. If we tolerate it in these cases, we will be accepting a standard that is not good enough. I examined the report on the prison site and it is unacceptable; the selection of consultants did not comply with the rules of procurement. They dropped the site cost per acre from the evaluation scheme, which is a key issue for anyone conscious of taxpayers' money. They ignored the fact that they were in a unique position to use unzoned land, yet went instead for a public advertisement system which guaranteed they would go for the top price. At that stage, the top price for land with potential was €100,000 per acre but they paid twice that. They paid almost full development land values, even though if they had handled it correctly they could have bought it for a much lower price at unzoned levels. They bought more than they said they needed at the site ultimately decided upon. They also entered into negotiations with just one buyer when the whole purpose of the system was to have multiple buyers and real competition in the market, which the Comptroller and Auditor General says compromised their position. The report is a litany of how not to handle a project. I think even the Minister, who will want to defend the Tánaiste today, will accept in private if not in public that this is not good enough.

The medical cards case is not acceptable. This was driven by a budget day announcement — one of these rabbits that was produced out of the hat, providing medical cards for everyone over 70. We know that project was not costed and the number of people and the cost were incorrectly estimated. They put themselves in an impossible negotiating position whereby they had to pay a huge amount for it. Then they used a trailing issue of the new discretionary cards. It is unclear where the information came from but they came up with a figure that 75,000 of these cards were provided because of exceptional medical circumstances. They paid away merrily on the basis of those 75,000 but we now find in an audit that the database only shows 36,000 such cards. Not even all of those cards were supposed to be compensated because they did not all come within the criteria for compensation. Once again, we see the taxpayer being treated like a patsy or fall-guy who must take up all the slack and carry the cost of Ministers making announcements they did not think through in the first place.

It is the same with integrated ticketing which has been in every programme for Government including the PDs and Fianna Fáil, yet it still has not been managed as a coherent project. One cannot escape the fact that Ministers have been at the heart of a consistent pattern of waste that is repeatedly coming to our attention. The consistent themes involving Ministers include an abuse of procedures, which was clear in the case of the really big ones that attracted public attention, such as e-voting, Media-Lab Europe, Stadium Campus Ireland and Punchestown. In every one of those cases the Comptroller and Auditor General found that Ministers abused the procedures under which projects were to be handled.

The other major area — I hope the Minister does not do it this year — is producing rabbits out of hats on budget day which have never been properly costed and have never gone through any private consultation within Departments. The high-water mark for that is decentralisation for which we will pay for many years to come because it was not planned.

Another area concerns bad deals struck by Ministers who rush in to such projects. We saw the former Minister, Deputy Woods, do it and we saw the former Minister, Pádraig Flynn, do it with toll roads. These approaches by Ministers need to be curbed and the only way to do so is by putting clear responsibility on the shoulders of those who commit to spending public money. One of the pillars of the Fine Gael-Labour Party document is to hold Ministers responsible so they cannot wash their hands of responsibility when projects they have pushed through and have not properly controlled go wrong. Ministers should not be promoted to something higher because they got such projects so seriously wrong.

We can change that system which is dogged by decision making without taking responsibility. There is a weakness in the follow up. I admit the mismanagement of projects has been partly down to poor experience. We have suddenly got into big public spending on infrastructural projects, yet have not until recently built up the expertise. I accept that some of the overruns were culpable because the Comptroller and Auditor General found there was a failure to do proper costings. However, they could possibly be excused on the basis we did not have the expertise and were trying to do things too fast. That cannot be accepted anymore, however, because we have been at this for a long time. We are at a high level of capital investment and can no longer tolerate projects coming in so far over budget.

A comprehensive set of reforms is required as regards the way we handle public money. That point is at the heart of the Fine Gael-Labour Party document. We must begin by reforming the gaping flaws in the way we formulate the budget. It is not acceptable that the tax side is not subjected to scrutiny other than a once off scrutiny by the Minister. That one-off investigation was scary to the extent to which huge sums had been committed, not only now but into the far distant future, which were yielding virtually nothing, in many cases, of commensurate value to the taxpayer. That has to change. We cannot have the discovery now and again of huge amounts of money gone down the tubes in tax schemes that have outlived their usefulness.

We have to change also the horse trading that characterises the budget and estimation formation. We must have systems where performance drives money and budgetary allocations and where Ministers take responsibility for performance when they get extra money. The day they get €200 million extra in their Estimate they must pin down exactly what is new and what they will deliver, and they should be held responsible. We have to get to that level of accountability from Ministers in the way the budget is formulated. The present system of phoney secrecy where the Estimates are produced at the end of November and the budget two weeks later, and the House packs up for Christmas after one omnibus vote does not pass as proper scrutiny of whether the decisions being made in the budget are the best ones for the taxpayer. We have to get away from that system. There are many changes that need to be made in the way we approach public spending.

A decade has elapsed since the Public Service Management Act was passed when we had to have proper strategies, objectives and performance indicators, and we had to measure these. The Minister would put his hand on his heart and say that has not happened. There are no proper performance indicators for huge swathes of public spending.

Recently I have looked at the area of crime. The budget has been doubled in this area and yet the detection rate for serious crime has collapsed. That is not Ministers being held accountable or using their budget formulation in a way that ensures the taxpayer gets value for money. That has to change. There is a need to put reforms in place to make that happen.

The Irish economy is rightly admired by many throughout the world. We have pursued consistent policies from one Government to another. There has been a pattern of consistent policy, protecting enterprise and ensuring that incentives are provided for enterprise. That has been a great success. There is the same opportunity to look at public service reform and to bring to it the same commitment to innovate, to fresh thinking and fresh management, the same openness and willingness to be held accountable for results that has characterised our success in other areas. That is the next great mountain that has to be climbed by Ireland.

It is not acceptable that as one of the most wealthy countries we have to justify accident and emergency departments that do not work for people in serious need, and in the area of disadvantage that children ten years into programmes of so-called combating disadvantage are still as badly off, relative to their peers, as at the start of those programmes. That belies a breakdown in the way we manage our public money and policies and form strategies, and what we accept as proper plans. I believe there is political responsibility for this.

On the last occasion this Government won office with all sorts of glossy plans for which there was no strategy whatsoever unpinning. It has created this cynicism and underperformance culture that we have to live with. There was no strategy to deliver and end hospital waiting lists by 2004. There was no strategy to reduce waiting times in accident and emergency departments or to reduce class sizes to 20 or fewer for children of nine years and under. Yet Ministers went out and said what they would do but there was nothing to underpin it and it did not happen. We have to get away from that scenario and set higher standards for ourselves in politics in the way we handle public money. That is one of the key themes that has to be addressed as we look to the next election. I hope there will be a clear and resounding vote for a better way to deal with public money.

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