Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

The Government has a big problem with wasting public money. Yesterday, I raised with the Taoiseach that taxpayers will stump up €100,000 for another bicycle shed and the never-ending catalogue of waste on the watch of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The Government is pouring millions of euro in people's hard-earned money down the drain.

The Comptroller and Auditor General's report published yesterday raised serious concerns regarding the spending of taxpayers' money across the board, including the Office of Public Works, OPW, paying €20 million to rent offices that were left empty. One of the loudest alarm bells was sounded on the spending on the International Protection Accommodation Service, IPAS, which is the responsibility of the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. The damning report points to a lack of due diligence and payment control in the awarding of IPAS contracts, on which the Government will spend €1.2 billion this year.

Some of it is breathtaking. There is evidence of overcharging by private operators, including companies charging for beds that were not provided and charging VAT when the accommodation is VAT exempt. One operator overcharged the State by €7.4 million for VAT and it still has a Government contract. The report shines a light on other serious issues, including incomplete due diligence records and unverifiable invoice rates. Signed contracts could not be found in more than one third of the cases examined. Proof of ownership of the properties or a copy of leases was provided for only 5% of the properties examined. Astonishingly, the prepayment system used by IPAS did not include a check to establish capacity or occupancy levels. We are talking about billions of euro of public money and the management around it is utterly incompetent and wide open to abuse.

Even before the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, we knew there were serious issues with spending on IPAS. We knew that two directors of a café-turned-IPAS-accommodation paid themselves €4.6 million in 2024 when only three years earlier, that same company made a profit of a mere €2,092. That is some pay hike. This is cowboy stuff and the big fear is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Government has allowed a small number of private operators to become multimillionaires overnight at the expense of the taxpayer and this cannot go on. Faoi stiúir an Rialtais seo, tá airgead poiblí á chur amú go scannalach ar bhrabúsaíocht atá ar bun acu siúd atá ag tabhairt faoi sholáthar sheirbhísí lóistín d’iarratasóirí ar chosaint idirnáisiúnta. Caithfear stop a chur leis. This squandering of public money is happening on the watch of the Government and on the Minister's watch and it is his job to sort it out. It is time to end the extreme profiteering from IPAS accommodation. Does the Government accept responsibility for this scandalous waste? Will the Minister urgently initiate a thorough review of every IPAS contract?

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