Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The cost overruns and lack of value for money evident in the context of the Appropriation Bill are a major issue. One of the most glaring issues that arose in 2024 is the persistent problem of cost overruns. Projects across multiple Departments routinely exceed their initial budgets, often by substantial margins. For instance, the Department of Defence has seen numerous projects balloon in cost, with little or no accountability for the overruns. The pattern is not limited to defence infrastructure projects. The Department of Transport frequently exceeds its budget, leading to a waste of taxpayers' money.

The lack of value for money is another crucial issue. Despite the allocation of substantial funds, the outcomes often fall short of expectations. We can look at the healthcare sector for example. When I came into the House in 2007, the health budget was €7 billion. It is now €26.5 billion and there are cost overruns every year. The Minister has been in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform for a long time, and now he is back in it again. The overruns are just unbelievable.

The Bill also highlights the allocation for the upcoming fiscal year. The lack of accountability is a fundamental issue underpinning the problems. Departments and agencies often operate with minimal oversight, leading to mismanagement and inefficiencies. The absence of stringent accountability measures means that those responsible for cost overruns and poor value for money face little or no consequences. That is not acceptable.

I am a small businessperson. Any businessperson, big or small, could not operate in this way. This culture of impunity must be addressed if we are to see any meaningful improvement in Government spending. There must be responsibility. I am not naming anyone, but Secretaries General of Departments are well paid, so one can imagine that they should have sufficient experience to watch spending. It is simply unacceptable. The Appropriation Bill 2024, while necessary for funding the operation of the Government, exposes deep-seated cost overruns, lack of value for money and Government overspending.

Without significant reforms to enhance accountability and ensure efficient use of funds, these problems will continue to undermine public trust and waste taxpayers' money. It is imperative that the Government takes decisive action, but I do not think it will. Let us just take the children's hospital, for example. My goodness. Professor Jimmy Sheehan and others came in here and told us they would build a hospital on the M50. We had a site of 70 acres. They said they would build it for between €900 million and €1.1 billion in 11 to 13 months. They also warned about going ahead with what we are doing. The Minister was invited to the AV room as well to hear that the equipment would be obsolete by the time the hospital was built, and here we are six, seven or eight years later when, of course, the equipment is obsolete. It is shameful to put the hospital in the wrong place, with no helipads other than a small helipad for red craft on a calm day. The children's hospital is the most massive example.

Then there is the bike shed, which we all hear about when we knock on doors. Someone must be accountable. Every Minister says he or she knew nothing about it. The Taoiseach knew nothing about it. He is angry. He said it should not have happened and it will not happen again. We get the usual stuff. No one is accountable. Somebody - the procurement officer and his or her superiors - must be responsible for it. They must be responsible for it.

Then we heard about the security hut on the way into Agriculture House. No one is responsible for that either. This is not acceptable. Heads would roll in any private company - full stop. They just could not argue the toss. First, it would not happen because the company would not keep functioning. How come Government projects are a soft touch? When the M8 motorway and national roads were built by Sisk and Roadbridge, the different elements of them came in under budget and ahead of time.

It was well publicised and acknowledged at the time and rightly so. I saw the way they worked and built those. Why is it that since then we are allowing such laggards and allowing this to happen? The funding is going back to Departments. Deputy Boyd Barrett talked about the money going back in sport. I think he said €24 million. I know that many clubs, including my own club in Newcastle, had money allocated for two years but unfortunately, An Bórd Pleanála turned down their planning application. That is the kind of money that will probably have to be returned and I can understand that with projects but €24 million is a lot of money. I was talking about a couple of hundred thousand euro. We know there are issues like that. There has to be planning permission and boxes ticked but that kind of money going back is unacceptable.

To think that €129 million is going back on national roads, how could this happen? We had uproar this year, and rightly so, when many existing national road projects were taken out of the proposed road works because there was no funding. In my town, we had the very same thing. Funding was pulled for the pavement overlay in the town of Fermoy. Councillor Peter O'Donoghue and many others contacted me about it, even though I am not from that area at all. It is a massive issue. They are coming up here to do sit-ins at the Department's offices. How can this happen? How can €124 million be going back? It is only early November. There is €124 million going back when there are projects waiting. Take the N24, soon to be M24, project under Arrup consultants which runs from Pallasgreen to Cahir at Cloghabreeda. Thankfully, that is continuing after a lot of lobbying to get the couple of million to keep the consultants in place. The other leg, the most important part of the road, runs from Cloghabreeda roundabout outside Cahir on to Clonmel, Carrick-on-Suir and then on to Pilltown in Waterford and parts of Kilkenny. Kilkenny County Council is the lead design team but that has been stalled. Arrup consultants got the contract and it was going to cost €3 million to keep them engaged on that most important, long-term and desperately needed upgrade to that road. We thought it was going to be upgraded to a motorway but now we have been told it will be a single carriageway. Nonetheless, it has stopped dead in the water for the sum of €3 million. The same happened two years ago and Deputies from all the affected counties - Kilkenny, Waterford and Tipperary - got together and thankfully, money was found. A sum of €3 million is not an awful lot and we see a vast amount of money going back. This should not be happening. That whole stop-start process should not be happening. How can we develop projects if we are going to be depending on consultants from one year to the next to bring them on from the pre-planning stage to notice to treat stage and all of the different ideas and design stages. We have to have continuity. There is no point in funding it for last year and this year and then there is no funding and it stops dead in its tracks. That kind of piecemeal approach, with a lack of forward planning, is not good enough. Again, a businessperson would not be able to sustain that.

Someone must be responsible. The buck stops with the Minister, the Taoiseach and all of the other Ministers but it also stops with the Secretaries General of the Departments. The Secretary General of the Minister's Department was asked at one stage to move to the Department of Health and he got a huge increase in wages. That would not happen in any private sector because it could not happen. I think the increase was €20,000 on top of an already exorbitant wage. What is so special about these people? They do a job and they are paid to do a job and they must have the competence but we need answers. We cannot go out and face the public and tell them who is responsible for the bicycle shed, the hut behind Agriculture House, or the printer that would not fit into the print room. I thank the printers for all of the work they do for us. Who could procure an item that would not fit? Who was responsible for procuring the Luas that would not fit over O'Connell Bridge and blocked the traffic? Where is the joined-up thinking? Somebody must be held accountable. We have been entrusted by the people and I thank the people of Tipperary for supporting me to get in here to ask these questions. This just beggars belief. We have to go back now, wave our hands and tell them that we do not know or that nobody is responsible. Nobody is responsible. Nobody knows who is responsible. That is not acceptable in a so-called democracy. It is not a dictatorship that we are working in. We have to be held accountable. The Minister has to be held accountable and, in turn, Secretaries General and senior officials have to be held accountable. Nobody is accountable. They are operating with impunity. There are no repercussions for the wilful waste. The old saying is that wilful waste makes woeful want and my goodness, have we wilful waste going on at a time of such need. There are people with scoliosis and a plethora of different problems and issues. They badly need money. I have mentioned Scoil Aonghusa, special schools and special places in Clonmel. When people look at this, they will not vote for any of us. They are deflated, disappointed, disgusted - there are not enough adjectives to describe it - and one cannot blame them, with the waste and the lack of accountability. These issues come up in the media, in The Ditchor wherever and no one is responsible. It just happens; it is Santa Claus or I do not know who. Nobody. That is not acceptable in any democracy. This is meant to be an accountable democracy. We are meant to hold people to account. We have the Appropriation Bill here and we are meant to get answers but it will be the same next year.

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