DID YOU hear the one about the fleet of hundreds of new police cars that got garaged for over a year because nobody could find the time to stick fancy flashing lights on them, writes Kilian Doyle
"Where was that?" you ask. "Some pitiful tinpot dictatorship where the bloated self-satisfied leaders swan around in huge chauffeured Mercs while their demoralised police minions are relegated to shuffling about in battered family saloons? Jaysus, aren't we lucky we live in Ireland?"
Err, sorry to throw a spanner in your scoffing, but it happened right here in gloriously profligate Ireland, a great little country where we spend billions of euro on civil servants who are neither civil nor serving, software we can't work, voting machines we can't use, stadiums we can't build. Not to mention politicians we can't shove into the stocks. Lucky indeed.
I refer, of course, to the recent report from Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) John Buckley detailing this ridiculous scenario. As far back as 1995, Buckley notes, concerns were raised over the practice of ordering Garda cars in bulk, which caused deployment delays because Garda garages couldn't cope with fitting out so many at once. In response, the Accounting Officer of the time promised to order them on a phased basis, already fitted with sirens and stickers and other doo-dahs required of a modern police car.
This evidently never happened. What did happen is that the gardaí received delivery in December, 2006 of 726 new cars, worth €14 million, most of which ended up being stored by subcontractors because they couldn't be deployed.
According to the CAG, the "average time loss arising from the delay in putting into use vehicles purchased in 2006 but not assigned to operational duties until 2007 and 2008, was the equivalent of 587 vehicles for a 12-month period".
Nearly 600 cars - fully paid for - gathering dust. "Paying, in 2006, for vehicles some of which were not put into service until 2008 raises questions as to the efficient use of public funds," Buckley says with admirable restraint.
In case the waste of cash isn't enough to make your blood boil, let me put it this way: 338 people died on Ireland's roads during 2007. But there's more. "It would have been good commercial practice to seek a discount on bulk purchases of over 700 vehicles. This did not appear to have been explored."
Yup, you read right. The Government Supplies Agency (GSA) ordered over 700 cars and didn't even ask for a discount. Not a whimper.
And sure, why would he bother to try to save a few bob? It's not like it's his money is it? It's yours. And mine. Imagine running a business like that. You'd last as long as a bunch of tenners on the furnace the GSA uses to burn public money.
All right, so I'm being a bit disingenuous. It turns out Ford, which supplies the vehicles, was already giving them a knock-down price and asking for a few bob off would have achieved nothing. Even the CAG accepted that excuse.
I suppose I grudgingly must too. But I'm still not impressed.
While we're on the subject of Garda cars, how wonderful of the gardaí to list the 700 "speed enforcement zones" on their website to tell us where we're likely to get busted.
Just in case you think this means you can feel free to speed everywhere else, the gardaí - cunning chaps that they are - have revealed only 80 per cent of the locations.
The rest are being kept secret, for they're where many of their new Gatso-equipped cars will be engaged in "covert" operations. Covert, eh? Would that be covert as in "covert in tarpaulins as they lay up in a garage for want of someone to stick air in their tyres", perchance?