REACTION:EXCHEQUER SPENDING plans revealed in the revised estimates for public services had indicated a €4 billion "black hole" of waste and inefficiencies, Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton said last night.
Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan presented the 2009 Revised Estimates for Public Services to the Dáil yesterday but Mr Bruton said the budget was “not fit for running a corner shop”.
The Government was “still relying on an absolutely arcane and archaic system of budgeting” and the book of estimates did not have “a single target”.
There was no pressure to deliver efficiencies and there were “no consequences for Ministers who fail”. Ministers reported in their annual output statements last year that over 40 per cent of targets had not been achieved, yet “not one Minister blushed, let alone tendered their resignation”.
“If the Government had put in place the United Kingdom’s system of efficiency agreements six years ago, we would by now have €4 billion to spare out of the estimates to address economic problems,” Mr Bruton said.
Labour’s finance spokeswoman Joan Burton said: “These estimates are the first detailed national accounts from Government for 2009. They show the huge volume of additional spending that unemployment will require.
“They also show the severe cutbacks in the capital programme. What they don’t give us is any sense of how the Government intends to use this massive spend to get people back to work.
“The increases in social welfare and health spending reflect growing unemployment, but because there has been little or no reform of the budgetary process in Ireland, there is very little opportunity to question the value for money of some of the spending.
“A huge amount of this spending will now be funded out of borrowing, which has grown increasingly expensive for Ireland because of the failure of the Government to deal properly with the banking crisis.”
Mr Bruton added: “Last year, Ministers reported in their annual output statements that over 40 per cent of the targets they set out to achieve in the previous year had not been achieved... The Government really needs to sharpen up. It cannot continue to spend money without any accountability... if the Government does not wise up and reform the system, people will rightly say the Government is failing them.
“This sickens me after all the years in which Fine Gael has been demanding reform.
“We have called for reform through the Committee of Public Accounts. Members of all parties,including Fianna Fáil backbenchers, and not just members of the Opposition, issued an agreed policy statement. Yet the Government has done nothing about it.”
He continued: “The most ridiculous element of all this is that relevant Oireachtas committees can only review these estimates five months into the year.”