The State Of Spending

Key Argument

Ireland lacks reliable, joined-up information about how public money is spent and whether public services are performing effectively.

Public Spending and Procurement

The government reported €18.5 billion in procurement for 2024. However, the video says this figure was based on the average value of contracts over seven years, rather than a verified total of payments made that year.

Published records are difficult to reconcile because there is no consistent national system connecting contracts awarded to orders, invoices and payments. Researchers Matthew Fenlon and Albert Dolan compiled more than 600,000 records for statespend.ie, representing over €111 billion in reported values. Around 42% lacked an order reference, while records for €18 billion lacked a supplier name.

These gaps make scrutiny difficult. For example, Education Department records showed 588 payments to EY totalling more than €35 million. But vague descriptions and missing shared references made it impossible to link the payments to specific contracts and assess what was delivered.

The video says the Public Procurement Office stopped collecting spending information in 2019, citing data-protection concerns. It is unclear whether GDPR required this.

Measuring Public-Sector Performance

The video argues that similar measurement problems affect public-sector performance. A survey found that only 20% of respondents believed their departments dealt effectively with poor performance.

In response to an information request, the Department of Public Expenditure provided ratings for nearly 45,000 civil servants but could not say how many had faced formal underperformance procedures, improvement plans or dismissal. The video also notes that, after 2016, five assessment categories were reduced to two. Fewer than one in 500 entries received a failing grade, while thousands of evaluations were incomplete.

Accountability and Proposed Fixes

The video argues that leaders cannot reliably assess whether spending achieves its aims or whether productivity is improving. Changing the people in charge will not fix systems that fail to measure results.

Proposed fixes include:

• Assigning a unique identifier to every contract and carrying it through orders, invoices and payments.
• Establishing consistent data standards.
• Strengthening enforcement of reporting requirements.

These measures would make it possible to trace spending from the initial decision to what was ultimately delivered.

Presenters and Contributors

• Kev Collins: Presenter and narrator
• Matthew Fenlon and Albert Dolan: Researchers named in the video