More than €108 billion in public spending data can now be tracked on a website launched by a Galway TD and The Problem Solving Association (TPSA).
Statespend.ie has been launched by Fianna Fáil TD Albert Dolan and Matthew Fenlon from TPSA, a non-profit group that applies mathematics, physics and computer science to improve public services and transparency.
Last year, the project made records regarding €78.5 billion worth of public spending available to see and the launch of the new site on Friday includes €108 billion worth of spending.
“A lot of State entities were publishing, but a lot also weren’t,” Dolan told The Irish Times.
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The National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, which is in charge of developing the new national children’s hospital, was not publishing purchase order records and Dolan and Fenlon’s work contributed to their records being made available, the TD said.
He cited HSE purchase orders as another example of their work. It had previously only reported purchase orders of more than €100,000 and that figure has now been dropped to €20,000, making more records public.
“We’ve also got the TII [Transport Infrastructure Ireland] to publish over €2 billion worth of records,” he said.
Dolan said the project was aimed at helping the Government, the public and other groups in holding each other accountable for how public money is spent.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers had been supportive of the project, he said.
Dolan said the “panopticon effect” is important.
The panopticon effect is a psychological phenomenon where people regulate and police their own behaviour because they believe they might be constantly watched.
“State bodies and State entities need to know that when they are spending money on public procurement, essentially money outside of themselves, they need to know that they are being watched,” he said.
“Not just by myself and other members of the Public Accounts Committee or the Comptroller and Auditor General, but by journalists too.
“I also think that where the power in our tool will come is we’re trying to get to a point where we have a golden thread of information.
“Essentially if the State enters into a contract, that contract leads to a series of things that happen to hopefully get to an outcome. Currently there is no linking of the payments in the purchase orders back to the original contracts ... so I can’t tell and you can’t tell whether a contract was on, under or over budget based on what it was tendered for.
“We can only get that data if we look for a specific contract. Whereas I think that this detail should be available to all of the public. Most importantly, it should be available in as close to real time as possible for our ministers so that they know when something is going wrong.”
In the aftermath of April’s fuel protests, Dolan, James O’Connor and Ryan O’Meara – Fianna Fáil’s three youngest TDs – issued a statement criticising the leadership.
They said the social contract is “strained to breaking point” and that “it should not require protests and deep community frustration to get a government to listen and act”.
Dolan said the spending website will help politicians and the public make the best decisions.
“I was glad that the Government did take the actions they did in reducing the fuel excise. I still want to see the Government go the distance on home heating oil in the budget because that is one area where the Government has yet to support people and so I really do hope that that happens effectively in the budget.”
