The cost of the controversial PPARS computer system for the health service is now heading for €186 million and is turning into a "never-ending project", Fine Gael has claimed.
Chief executive of the Health Service Executive Prof Brendan Drumm suspended the implementation of the system after concerns were raised about the cost of the project last year. The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) had also strongly criticised the way PPARS had been managed and delivered.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny today said he had received a copy of a new report commissioned by the HSE, which reveals the project will spend €21 million of taxpayers' money this year and the same amount again next year, on top of the €144 million spent to the end of 2005.
"The report ominously warns of the PPARS fiasco turning in to a "never-ending project" and that in the past year "overall project governance appears to have gone".
The leaked report by Astron Consulting was raised by the Fine Gael leader during Leaders' Questions in the Dáil today.
"Over one year ago we blew the whistle on the disastrous PPARS project. We were promised immediate action. We were told that the project would be frozen. The taxpayers' money would be protected. The waste would end. We now find that the project wasn't frozen, the taxpayers' money is still being poured down the PPARS drain. The waste goes on," he said.
Mr Kenny said the consultants' report of September 2006 produces "some truly damning findings".
He said it concludes that the system was badly conceived, poorly implemented, that the system is not stable yet, that its ongoing costs are very high and that it also reflects the old, now abolished, health board structure.
Mr Kenny claimed that with the balance of the €17 million spent on PPARS this year the Government could have, amongs other things, employed 100 extra public health nurses to assist elderly people to live at home.
It emerged in May that management involved in PPARS, which stands for Personnel, Payroll and Related Systems, did not follow official public procurement policies or implement appropriate tax clearance procedures in relation to the recruitment of external contract staff for the project.
A confidential report given to the board of the HSE and carried out by internal auditors, also expressed concern that Blackmore Group Assets Ltd, an external recruitment company which received nearly €2 million under the project, had been commissioned given the level of financial and other information provided by it.