The chairman of an influential Dáil committee last night made a scathing attack on inefficiencies "almost unprecedented in the Irish public sector" at the Office of Public Works (OPW).
The Fine Gael TD, Mr John Perry, complained of "absurdities" at the OPW after the Dáil Committee of Public Accounts considered a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mr John Purcell, on its Building Maintenance Service unit.
Despite a defence of efforts to improve practices at the unit by the OPW yesterday, Mr Perry said there had been "virtually no implementation" of previous proposals by consultants to improve the unit.
Mr Purcell's report, published last December, found high levels of staff downtime, overtime and sick leave at the unit. "Losing one of every nine hours of basic time through sick absence represents a very considerable overhead for the Buildings Maintenance Service," it said.
The chairman of the Office of Public Works, Mr Sean Benton, told the hearing yesterday that much of unit's work had to be done out of hours so as not to disturb day-to-day activities at the State buildings maintained by the service. The absenteeism rate was significantly reduced when 12 staff on long-term sick leave were excluded from the figures.
But Mr Perry said that some of the inefficiencies highlighted by Mr Purcell were "staggering". He was not impressed at some of the OPW's attempts to improve the unit's performance.
"Over 10 per cent of working time is lost due to illness, and a further 20 per cent is lost on down-time. One district lost 47 per cent of its working hours on down-time," he said.
"A commercial service that tried to operate on this basis would wind up on permanent down-time."
Mr Purcell investigated the unit after cumulative losses estimated at €3.5 million were recorded in the 1998-2001 period. Most of the losses were due to invoicing errors and failure to collect debts, he said. This was caused by a combination of an unreliable computer billing system, which cost €600,000, and operational failures by the unit's staff, he said.
Although many of the unit's financial figures were "notional", Mr Purcell's report found that managers were "severely hampered" in their efforts to run the business because they were not in a position to produce accurate accounts. There was no financial controller.
The unit had failed to adopt commercial practices in its relations with its clients, Mr Purcell's report said. It did not charge for around two-thirds of the business it carried out and there was significant undercharging for work done, it said.
The report found that competitive forces were operating to only a very limited extent in 1998-2001.
