Public Accounts Committee's investigates....

spadder

Following on from the FAS debacle, what quangos, FF appointments, sweet deals and general disregard for public money would you like to see investigated next?

Off the top of my head:

HSE
E-voting machines and the sweet storage deals arranged.
Thornton Hall ( moving mount joy)
Moving the children’s hospital to the Mater, private carparks, hotels etc.
NTR
NAC
RTE
National consumer agency

Nodin

Unless these investigators have a clear task, staff and goal, we'd be dead by the time they'd be finished.

nhughes100

Boards of management have to be called into question now, Fas had 4 members of Ictu and 4 members of Ibec all on about 15 grand each to attend a handful of meetings a year in what essentially is a rubber stamping exercise. This is rife in the public sector.

Mr.Micro

How about the County Councils? Councillors have big expense accounts and are largely unaccounted for. Local government is in massive need of reform. Re-clarify the role of the biggest quango and his minions, the county manager, a person with more power than the councillors and operates unhindered and unelected.

NotInventedHere

Mr.Micro wrote: »

How about the County Councils? Councillors have big expense accounts and are largely unaccounted for. Local government is in massive need of reform. Re-clarify the role of the biggest quango and his minions, the county manager, a person with more power than the councillors and operates unhindered and unelected.

Mabye you would be so kind as to back up that assertion with some facts.

spadder

NotInventedHere wrote: »

Mabye you would be so kind as to back up that assertion with some facts.

Galway water anyone?

common_parlance

spadder wrote: »

what... sweet deals and general disregard for public money would you like to see investigated next?

Top of my list has to be unvouched expenses for elected officials. In a country where the only thing declining faster than the public's trust in TDs is its disposable income, it defies belief that these chancers are allowed to file for expenses without a single receipt, invoice or threat of audit.

This simply means TDs can make a personal contribution to the fiscal deficit by fudging up a few expenses and ultimately using their allowances as a supplement to their already ludicrous salaries.

I heard the argument on Prime Time at some stage that introducing a vouching system would be far too expensive. What a crock! I once worked in an office with hundreds of employees that only needed one person to file receipts and pay out expenses. This might have costed the firm one annual salary, but saved them a fortune in fraudulent claims for imaginary travel and accommodation expenses.

I'm sure we could pull some sleepy civil servant out of one of the bloated quangos to do this for the measly 166 members of the Dáil, at no extra cost to the taxpayer. And I bet my left leg that if this was brought in we would see a sudden and suspicious drop in expenses claims in a hurry.

Make An Bord Snip a permanent fixture, I say.

deadhead13

With over 1000 quangos which have a combined budget of 13 billion - where to start?

thebman

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but the HSE was a unification of the regional health boards but none of the benefits in efficiencies such as fewer staff being required has materialised out of this.

Is there a single person that doesn't work there that believes it is not in need of reform?

Reform it.

We also urgently need to reform our energy and communication regulators. This is a green party post and they have so far, failed spectacularly in their position on this thanks to Eamon Ryan.

We have awarded our NBS (National Broadband Scheme) to a mobile phone company which make it useless for business essentially, our line rental is the highest in the fooking world and eircom are still going bankrupt.

Our regulators seem to be funded by the companies they are supposed to regulate so the more profit the companies make, the bigger their budgets. This is not at all in anyway in the publics interest and reform must occur.

Darragh29

spadder wrote: »

E-voting machines and the sweet storage deals arranged.

I can tell you one thing, I would put my money on that there isn't a landlord who signed a 25-30 year lease for the storage of these e-voting machines that isn't an ardent FF supporter.

Darragh29

I was at a funeral recently where an FF TD attended the funeral. As it happened, the FF TD in question had substantial business dealings with the same individual who had died. I'd love to know did he claim expenses for travel to this funeral and for his overnight expenses or did he pay for them personally as he was doing business in a personal capacity with the deceased...

Is there any way an FOI request can be made to get to the bottom of this??? I know the FF and I know well he billed the taxpayer.