Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Shanahan on bringing this important Bill forward. Its principles have considerable merit. As a party that believes in transparency in all aspects of public life, including and especially the expenditure of public money, the Labour Party fully supports the Bill. As was said, what it seeks to achieve is simple and quite straightforward. The Government might argue about the mechanics of the Bill and how its provisions can be implemented in practice but, in some respects, that is an argument for another day. The Government is not opposing the Bill but that is not the same as actively supporting it. I hope the Minister, the Minister of State and their officials will work actively and on a practical and pragmatic basis with Deputy Shanahan to enhance and finesse the Bill to allow it to go to Committee Stage or, at least, to a form of pre-legislative scrutiny in the next few months.

Even with my experience as a Member of the Oireachtas for 13 years, having served at Cabinet level and on committees that are accountable to the Dáil, having spent a period as a member of the public accounts committee, and now as an Opposition spokesperson on public expenditure and finance, it can still be a challenge to access in a timely fashion the kind of information and material we require on spending on capital assets and capital expenditure. This is even though we might know where to go. The Bill addresses many of those shortcomings. We have the public spending code, the data bank, the Department of public expenditure and reform capital tracker, and the Where Your Money Goes website, but we do not have a regular and, importantly, standardised way in which information on spending on climate investment, roads, rail, housing, health, education and other significant spending on capital assets is received and presented in the timely fashion that we require. Any information produced in respect of expenditure on capital assets and updates and so on should be done and presented in an accessible and user-friendly fashion. The Bill aims for such information to be presented in a standardised way and that an obligation be placed on line Ministers to publish updates and this data regularly and in a more granular way. That is an important point.

It is also important that the Bill gives space to Ministers to prescribe how this ought to happen. The Bill is not necessarily overly prescriptive in the way it prescribes how this ought to be done. That is only right and proper and should help this Bill to move to the next Stage. It is also important that Ministers are given some space to determine what might be commercially sensitive, but this should not be defined in a liberal way or used to avoid the transparency and reporting obligations the Bill would place on Ministers. To do that would undermine the principles and objectives of the Bill and what Deputy Shanahan and his colleagues are trying to achieve.

I have heard it said previously that more transparency on what has been paid for projects over the years can run the risk of giving too much away when it comes to the public procurement and tendering process. I hope the House will agree that is perverse. I say it is in fact the opposite. More transparency and more accountability along the way, taken alongside the sheer scale of Government investment and what that means for the State's capacity to shape the market and outcomes, is better for the process all round. It is better for value for money, it will help with regular reviews of how we tender and procure, and it will help prevent lowballing and the need for mediation for contract disputes that causes delays and overruns, the cost of which can often far exceed what had been budgeted for initially. Good cost control is good and responsible government and governance.

It is far too often the case that the first time we might learn of a significant project overrun, or at least the first time it might come to significant political and public attention, or we might hear of poor cost control and other failures, which cost us money and, importantly, cost our society and economy in the long run, is when the Comptroller and Auditor General undertakes a special report or when a Secretary General is before the public accounts committee on an annual chapter review. Surely, we should be doing all we can to avoid these all too frequent and often fractious encounters.

It has been said by Deputy Shanahan and others that there are serious shortcomings in how we do our business in this Legislature in respect of budgeting more generally. It is not just me saying that. The OECD said it a number of years ago. We have introduced some innovations to ensure there is better parliamentary oversight in respect of the budget process but, quite frankly, we need to go much further. Constitutionally, the passing of budgets is a matter for the Legislature but we know that, in effect, it is the Executive that exerts most of the control. The budgetary process has become nothing short of a rubber-stamping exercise. That is bad for democracy and parliamentary oversight and is something that needs to be kept under constant review.

There is much in the Bill that could, for example, be introduced in the context of an expected update to the Department of public expenditure and reform circular issued in March. I understand that circular is expected to be updated shortly. This might be a gesture and something the Minister of State could consider as another step in the right direction as regards improved transparency in spending and reporting on capital projects.

There is a lot to recommend the Bill. It is quite timely. The Labour Party is happy to support it.

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