Public spending code transparency
Deputy Shanahan argued that major projects are delayed by the spending code and that Ministers get a fast-track lane. The Minister said he would ask the Public Expenditure Minister to consider the issue in the Estimates process and how funding is presented.
Reviewing spends on projects such as the Mater hospital, the Dunkettle roundabout, the Cork and Dublin runways, the national children's hospital, it is clear how important it is to have a Minister to shepherd a project through our cumbersome public spending code. It appears to me that many fine and needed projects that lack ministerial political patronage are left strangled by toxic departmental processes. Fast-track projects suggest Ministers have a VIP lane through the spending code while others are left sitting on the hard shoulder. Large sums earmarked in the budgetary process are never heard of again in this House. The Dáil is never supplied with a list of approved and completed projects. The website, www.whereyourmoneygoes.gov.ie, with all its multicoloured glory, can only break down to the nearest billion while parliamentary questions on capital spending only obfuscate rather than illuminate. Does the Minister feel, as I do, that there is a democratic deficit in this House in how we approve capital spending? In the upcoming budget, can he provide more granular detail even if just historical detail on completed projects so that we can see specifically where our money goes?
Comment on this
I acknowledge that this is an issue Deputy Shanahan has raised in the House on a number of occasions. I will ask the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, to consider what Deputy Shanahan has said in the context of the Estimates process and the way in which we allocate funding to the different Votes, that is, the different Government Departments. In many instances the funding is then provided onwards to the public bodies, but I think what Deputy Shanahan is looking for is a more detailed presentation of the geographic spread of the public capital investment programme. There is a certain amount of information online. I know the Deputy has been critical of the online tracker of major capital projects. I will ask the Minister to reflect on what the Deputy has said and to come back to him.