Sinn Féin proposes anti-corruption commission for public spending

By Cillian Sherlock, PA Ireland

Sinn Féin has called for a new anti-corruption commission to investigate the spending of public money.

It blames the Government for recent scandals involving the cost of public structures, including a €336,000 bike shed on parliamentary grounds, €1.4 million on a Department of Finance security hut, and the spiralling costs and delays of the multibillion-euro National Children’s Hospital.

The party’s finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said these incidents are “probably just the tip of the iceberg”.

The party’s plan puts forward measures including a “waste audit” of all Government departments and state bodies, a new standards and anti-corruption commission, reform of the Freedom of Information Act and stronger powers for bodies like the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Ombudsman and the Consumer Protection Commission.

Mr Doherty said: “We need to find out exactly how much money this Government has been wasting department by department. What are the things that we don’t even know about yet?”

He said a new government that would not “squander” public money is needed, adding: “We need a party leading government that isn’t allowing some businesses, some insiders and vested interests to make a fortune on the back of wasteful public spending. All of this money that has been wasted has gone into someone’s pockets.”

The party says money “overspent on the children’s hospital” could have gone towards affordable rental and purchase homes and social housing.

It said its measures would drastically increase accountability, transparency and value for money in public spending.

Mairead Farrell, who took over as chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee after Brian Stanley quit Sinn Féin, said the proposed new commission would have powers to investigate corruption.

Asked if there was corruption in Government procurement processes to warrant the creation of the body, Ms Farrell said: “I don’t believe in making claims until I have the exact information to back it up – that’s just the way I operate – but that’s why we need to have an anti-corruption commission.

“That is why we need to have a total audit in terms of the wastage of public money. The issue here and the crux of everything is that we find things out here in terms of a drip-drop kind of fashion – and that’s not the way it should be.

“A Sinn Féin government would be front-footed in relation to any wastage that we come across or that we see happening in any department by any public body, that’s what needs to happen. It needs to be very clear, and we would stamp that out.”