Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

That is not in doubt. The point is the Minister represents a Government that should respond to some of the issues that are raised with regard to how we control our finances, but does not have a role in that regard. That role has been vested in a different Minister. I wish the Minister did have a role because I suspect he would give a more sympathetic hearing to some of the changes I would like to propose.

That said, I thank Mr. John Purcell, who is here tonight, for his outstanding contribution and for the quality of the reports he produced and their enormous value in forming the work of this House. The truth is, were it not for the beacon of light coming from the Committee of Public Accounts, and the Comptroller and Auditor General in particular, we would be stumbling around in the dark most of the time about what is happening in Departments with public moneys. It is a shame that is how it is.

We should reform and extend the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General so that it does not so much focus after the event on past failures and sob over the milk that has been spilled, but considers why Departments keep making the same mistakes. This week a report on procurement was issued. We had a similar report in 2005 when several other agencies had their knuckles rapped about procurement and another in 2002. This is a recurring theme, but Ministers who come in to respond to the debate on the reports do not change anything. We still have agencies under ministerial control that breach public procurement rules. Something has broken down in the system, but I do not believe the Minister for Education and Science will come in and be accountable for what is happening.

We need to examine the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General and recognise that system-wide failures arise time and again in its reports. The management of major change is one of them. We have not delivered in that regard. Recent major change projects include e-Government, the Ballymun regeneration project, the national revaluation of property by the Valuation Office and the integrated public transport ticketing project. We were to break through to something different to govern in a different way but in every case we have failed to deliver. The e-Government project was 50% off target. I cannot remember the result of the Ballymun regeneration project but it cost double the amount anticipated and was off target. The national revaluation project imploded after property in just one county was tested. We spent €10 million on the integrated ticketing project and have nothing to show for it. No Minister ever puts his or her hand above the rampart and admits something happened on his or her watch. Nobody is responsible. These are major changes of significant importance to Ireland in moving to anticipate the challenges in our becoming part of the knowledge economy, using electronics intelligently in the distribution of services to save money and so on, and we are failing dismally.

The list of failures could include decentralisation, the climate change strategy and the costing of new initiatives, especially political pet projects. Governments come into the House on budget day and bring forward proposals for which they have no solid costings. No Minister takes responsibility; the same mistakes are repeated and we do not learn. The costing of major capital projects is another problem. Invariably — not just in Ireland — those who promote capital projects have a very rosy view of what they will cost. They propose them to governments, get them to commit and afterwards the costs prove entirely different from those first anticipated. That is a recurring theme and we are doing nothing about it. Management and procurement of ICT projects is another area of chronic weakness. I am sorry the Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, is not waiting to hear the end of the debate having said he would be in a position to respond. ICT projects are crucial. However, PPARS, the e-voting project and procurement in many agencies have gone adrift. This is a problem in other jurisdictions, not just in ours. Procurement flaws recur repeatedly.

There needs to be an extension of the Comptroller and Auditor General's role to examine the reasons these problems are continually repeated in other areas, assess whether there are problems in the corporate governance of Departments and agencies and examine the skills and experience lacking in many Departments to manage projects of this nature. That is crucial. Anybody examining the OECD report on why we have quadrupled public spending in many areas without delivering at the front line on the scale we would have expected needs answers to these questions. We have a service that provides a beacon of light, yet we do not learn from it. It is not informing the way we debate or spend public money.

The Oireachtas needs to completely reform how we spend our money. That goes to the heart of what this debate should be about. Our system of financial scrutiny is hopelessly outdated and has been made worse by changes in the last budget, whereby decisions on spending and taxes are made on one day out without a notion of scrutiny, there is a vote at the end of the debate and it is all over for the year. That is the most ludicrous way of spending money. No other parliament would tolerate it. There is no serious scrutiny of the Estimates, despite the absent Minister saying expenditure evaluation has been a key part of governance. That is not the case. The Public Service Management Act intended that we would have evaluation as part of a rolling three-year programme. As it stands, it will take approximately 50 years to have evaluation across the programmes that are supposed to be evaluated. The expenditure evaluation has melted down. More importantly, a high level report by the Secretaries General indicated that performance evaluation had no impact on subsequent budgetary decisions; therefore, even the little that is being done has no impact on how money is spent.

Ministers are opting out of their responsibilities to put proper strategy statements in place. It will surprise the Acting Chairman to know that when Deputy Bertie Ahern resigned as Taoiseach, eight of his Ministers had not produced any strategy statement. They were obliged to provide such statements within six months of taking office to give direction to their Departments and the agencies under them. Within 12 months, with new Ministers being appointed, eight of the 15 had not done so. How does one expect public servants to take seriously the strategy and direction of their agencies or Departments if the Minister who is supposed to give strategic direction is still sitting on his or her hands 12 months after being appointed?

Key performance indicators are totally underdeveloped. The Comptroller and Auditor General could provide a very valuable new service for the Oireachtas in examining the inadequacy of key performance indicators as they have been produced in the output statements which have come approximately nine years later than intended. The other major issue which has become more of a focus, particularly under the OECD, is that agencies have little or no scrutiny in and no accountability to this House. This outsourcing of government and managing of public spending as if scrutiny does not matter and the Oireachtas should not examine how money is spent is at the heart of the failure of public service reform. After a decade of great economic opportunity and Ministers talking about public service reform on the back of the 1997 Act we have had no such reform and the OECD tells us we are way off the mark and have become far too reliant on the fragmentation of government into numerous agencies. What is worse, not only are we fragmenting them, but we are imposing these totally inflexible controls on them in order that they can do nothing. We do not even get the advantage, that multiple agencies closer to the coalface have flexibility in responding to events. Their pay, grades and numbers are tied in. Everything is locked in through a highly centralised system from the Department of Finance. Once cannot have delegation and effective delivery of services at the front line with such absolute control. One must trust one's local managers, delegate responsibility and hold them accountable for their failures. This House should be much more systematically informed of the weaknesses in how we scrutinise money.

The Comptroller and Auditor General or his successor would not feel they have the right to tell the House we are failing in our duties to scrutinise public spending because they would not believe that is their remit. However, we are failing in our responsibilities in this House because the system does not allow it. The previous Committee of Public Accounts highlighted some of these deficiencies and talked about having an Estimates commissioner to help us in our work in order that we could become more professional, but that is the first and last we heard of it. In introducing the new Comptroller and Auditor General no mention has been made of a previous report from the committee which, no doubt, the Comptroller and Auditor General's expertise helped inform.

We must move into the 21st century in how we approach public spending. The notion that Departments can have pet projects, undertake cost-benefit analyses and not publish them is unacceptable. Cost-benefit analyses are to inform this House on whether we are making good decisions and should not be kept as the property of those who put them together. Allowing people to judge their own cases is a recipe for ineffective decision making. Evaluation should not allow people to be judges of their own cases.

Unfortunately, I am coming to the end of my time and I am whistling in the dark to some degree. I do not think there will be a response from the Government. I congratulate Mr. Buckley on his appointment. Although I am critical of the fact that the post was not advertised for open competition, I am not critical of Mr. Buckley's capability. I am sure he would have been selected. I know from colleagues that he is extremely capable and will bring enormous skills to bear on the job. Open competition is a matter of principle the OECD tells us we should apply. Governments have stated it is their approach to top level appointments and I do not understand why it was not done in this instance. However, that is not a criticism of the appointment made, which I am glad to endorse.

I wish Mr. Buckley well in his work. As I stated, he is the one beacon of light available to the House in informing us objectively how money is spent. I look forward to the day when his role is expanded and we will have a much more professional approach within the House to the way we do our important work. It is the fear of being caught out and held accountable that is driving Ministers' agendas. That culture filters right down through the system. Sadly, there have been numerous cases in which Ministers with their own pet projects bent all the rules and saw nothing untoward about it.

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