THREE CONSULTANCY companies are working free to help the Department of Agriculture sort out its financial problems, it was revealed yesterday.
Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney said KPMG, Deloitte and Accenture had senior consultancy teams in the department working pro bono to help it solve its financial problems.
He said he had met a senor official of Deloitte in the run-up to the election who had offered help and he had accepted the offer on condition the company worked for nothing.
Mr Coveney told a gathering of media invited to a press briefing in the department yesterday that this had happened and senior officials from the three companies, including partners, were helping to sort out the department’s finances.
They were brought in, he said, to give credibility to the financial review that had been ordered and to put a ceiling on what the department could spend next year.
He had done this to bring credibility to the review by having outside experts to advise his senior officials, who have to trim €200 million from the department’s current and capital spending.
In reply to questions, Mr Coveney would not query the reasons why the offer was made, but he said the companies had said it was in the interests of everyone that the economy recovered as quickly as possible.
The companies involved that had and still did work for the department would not gain any special favours for what they were doing.