Financial waste and poor long-term planning has been identified within the prison system. That should not come as a surprise, given that such flaws are endemic within the public service. But a prison system that was shamefully neglected by successive governments and subjected to knee-jerk political reactions when things went wrong was particularly vulnerable to administrative mistakes, bad planning and cost overruns. As usual, nobody is being held to account.
This damning report was commissioned by the newly-independent Irish Prison Service (IPS) and there is a strong whiff of blame-transference about it. The document is critical of piecemeal decisions taken by former minister for justice John O'Donoghue and officials within the Department of Justice before the year 2000 and of various construction projects completed since then. It identifies the absence of a comprehensive development plan for the prison system, along with design and construction mistakes and financial waste, as major flaws. And it recommends the establishment of business plans, progress reports and minuted meetings that will provide a proper audit trail in the future.
So far, so good. Any independent agency worth its salt would want to put distance between itself and earlier government failures. This report, which looked at value for money of those capital projects worth more than €5m completed since the year 2000, will certainly do that. But the IPS will be judged on how much it learns from past planning and expenditure mistakes. In particular, it must address a startling lack of documentation that has prevented a detailed appraisal of past multi-million euro projects, both at the planning and in post-completion phases. Without such material, there can be no accountability. And without the threat of accountability, at least, there will be inadequate reform.
The IPS is already under considerable pressure. As one of the "early movers" in the government's half-baked decentralisation programme of 2003, the newly created State agency was ordered to transfer its operations to Longford. And, in spite of a refusal by many senior and middle managers to leave Dublin - and warnings from the interim IPS board of a loss of corporate memory - the move has just been undertaken. It should not come as a surprise to learn that the overall cost is unknown.
The report on the prison service is not uniformly negative. It confirms that some projects were important, innovative and in line with best international practice. But inadequate long-term planning and poor financial controls led to waste and duplication. This absence of strict cost-benefit analysis pervades Government planning. It is most evident in relation to road and rail projects under Transport 21. And, at a time of economic uncertainty and falling exchequer returns, it should not be tolerated. Value for money is not just a concept for individual householders. It must operate at all levels of society if our productivity is to be sustained.