Seanad debates
Thursday, 12 December 2002
Appropriation Bill, 2002 [Certified Money Bill]: Second and Subsequent Stages.
The Department of Finance – I believe in 1997, under the then Minister, Deputy Quinn – initiated what was meant to be a rolling process of expenditure reviews, when each of the programmes of Government was meant to be considered in turn and we were meant to evaluate whether they were actually meeting the targets we had set for them. In practice, it quickly ran into the ground. Without going into detail, I and many others have come to the conclusion that one simply should not ask the Civil Service and, in particular, the Department of Finance to evaluate expenditure programmes. It is simply not possible to do this for various cultural and other reasons involving the way the Department of Finance relates with other Departments. It could not be done fairly and one would not get a reasonable result.
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