Failure of ethical integrity among State bodies means that funding for essential public services suffer, writes Elaine Byrne
SOMETIMES, TRUTH isn't good enough, sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded." For Batman in the movie, The Dark Knight, the virtue of trust in public life was paramount.
The Department of Finance published a value for money and policy review initiative guidance manual last year. This manual outlines the best practice procedures for government departments to follow when conducting their internal value for money reviews of public expenditure. It highlights, for example, the advantages and disadvantages of including Fás representatives on the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment steering committee which evaluate Fás administered programmes.
Acknowledging a possible underlying conflict of self-regulation, the manual notes that any such reviews of Enterprise Ireland's overseas office network by Fás representatives "might consequently be less rigorous in its approach to questions of efficiency and effectiveness". Well theres an understatement. A word check of the department's 110-page manual, by the way, reveals not a single entry for the word trust.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) must feel like Batman sometimes in his toil against society's largess, all the while taken for granted. Year after year, the CAG issues annual reports, attempting to attract the public's attention to wastage within public expenditure.
Since 1999, the CAG felt it necessary to establish an additional reporting mechanism to his annual reports. Ten "special reports" have now been published. These outline the results of the CAG's in-depth examinations arising from matters of particular concern within his annual reports. These user-friendly reports are accessible on the CAG's website, www.audgen.gov.ie
The Fás controversy dates from the CAG's special report of last May. Fás's exploits in Florida have become a lightning rod to embody all that's wrong about wastage of public funds.
Let's not stop there. The May special report also criticised the underlying "failures relating to the procurement process, governance and financial management" within the Abbey Theatre, the National Library of Ireland, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service, Science Foundation Ireland and Beaumont Hospital.
The 2007 CAG annual report drew attention to "deficient" procurement procedures in the Irish Prison Service. Under department procedures, departments and offices "permit departures from the normal process of competitive tendering" in "exceptional circumstances". In 2006, the prison service recorded three exceptional circumstances, valued at €260,000. In 2007, this escalated to 60 contracts signed without recourse to competitive processes, worth €18.6 million.
The September 2007 CAG special report into the National Education Welfare Board found that only one of 122 individual IT purchases were the subject of a tender process. Lapses within internal audit controls "were exploited by a member of staff, apparently in collaboration with a supplier" and have ultimately cost the taxpayer over €700,000.
How much, in total, has financial mismanagement cost the taxpayer over the last 10 years?
Enough for the €10 million cancer vaccination programme for 12-year-old girls? Or the €2.8 million in support-services grants for the 21 fee-paying Protestant schools? How about the 600 hospital beds the HSE will close next year or the loss of 780 new Garda recruit places in Templemore? What about the 1,000 fewer teachers than planned from next September?
These are the real-time consequences of the failure of ethical integrity in Irish public life.
Financial propriety and principled standards are concepts with a long history, as illustrated within some of the first CAG reports in the 1920s.
During the course of the Irish civil war in 1922, politicians and civil servants were forced to live under military guard in Government Buildings.
Trapped, their food was delivered to them each day from a nearby restaurant. Some two years later, the minister for finance, Ernest Blythe, issued the following letter to those same individuals: "I am directed by the minister for finance to refer to the circumstances during the months of June and July 1922 when owing to dangerous conditions in the city it was necessary for ministers, deputies, officials and other persons occupied on duties at Government Buildings, to remain there for some days, having their meals supplied from a neighbouring restaurant [Messrs Mills].
"The cost of these meals was met out of public funds and the Comptroller and Auditor General on examining the accounts thereof, has questioned the propriety of such a charge.
"The minister agrees that the expenditure is not such as should be met from public funds and has directed that steps be taken for the recovery thereof from the persons concerned.
"The cost of meals supplied to you in the above mentioned period is found to be £4.9:6, and in the circumstances I am to ask that you will be so good as to forward a cheque for this amount drawn in favour of the secretary, ministry of finance. Mise le meas, JJ McElligott [assistant secretary general] ministry of finance."
Put into perspective, when converted to contemporary worth, the £4.9:6 restaurant bill amounts to €221. Where did it all go wrong?