Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)

I thank the Minister for his response, but I am baffled by the manner and tone of that reply. This is a damning report. The only conclusion that can be drawn from it is that we had runaway over-spending by local authorities involving hundreds of millions of euro. If the Minister wants to make light of that, I would ask him to re-examine the report. For example, it shows that almost one third of work was over budget and there were no contingency plans when costs overran. The auditor has said that it was considered a success to secure funds and how they were spent was considered a secondary measure. In addition, one in every 25 cases revealed showed that there was no prior departmental approval for their expenditure.

The report showed that over 30% of projects ran into over-spend. What is the monetary value of that sum? Can the Minister provide a breakdown by relevant headings and individual local authorities? What efforts has the Minister made to recoup the costs and sanction local authorities that went ahead with projects without his Department's approval?

Oddly, the Minister says that guidelines at the time were quite loose, but they were not. European directives and procurement process were in place at the time. The report shows that European procurement procedures were breached concerning tendering processes for some of these projects. Will the Minister indicate how many local authorities this matter relates to?

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