A Dáil committee has dismissed as absurd and pointless the current practice of scrutinising revised Government estimates nearly four months after their publication.

Mr Seán Fleming, chair of the select committee on finance and the public service, said yesterday it was unacceptable that the committee was only now examining the estimates, although they were published in November.

"Half the money has already been spent," he said. "To scrutinise the estimates at this point in time is a total waste."

He urged the Department of Finance to make the estimates available to Oireachtas committees earlier in future. "We should be revising the 2005 estimates before the conclusion of the year," said Mr Fleming.

Yesterday's committee meeting was described as a "charade" by Fine Gael finance spokesman Mr Richard Bruton. "We don't have enough information to make an intelligent comment on budgets already spent," he said.

Information on the estimates provided by the Department was needlessly "incremental", with little to indicate whether the State was getting value for money, said Mr Bruton.

"As each year goes by, this gets more and more frustrating," he said. "We are operating in an executive-dominated system."

An "early-warning system" should be developed to flag overspend in Government Departments, added Ms Joan Burton, Labour finance spokeswoman.