Government warned over failure to manage strategy

THE GOVERNMENT has been warned by its own consultants that it is failing to manage effectively across a whole range of sectors.

A study presented to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern last year found that the Government was failing to co-ordinate elements of its strategy or set out priority areas in its Programme for Government.

The conclusions of the study, obtained by Fine Gael TD John Bruton, said it has become clear that Government ministers themselves were to blame for failing to deliver on their promises.

A report by PA Consulting found that after six years of coalition government, “progress on cost-cutting issues had been disappointing, with the system still struggling to find practical collaborative mechanisms to progress the management of these issues.”

The consultants also advised that Government ministers should review their progress and priorities at least every two months, to ensure they were on target.

Mr Bruton said this was a damning indictment of the Government’s performance in office.

“That fact that such a public recommendation would have to be made at all is acutely embarrassing in that it shows that ministers were not bothered enough to devote two or three hours every two months to a systematic overview of their responsibilities,” he said.

“They were obviously too busy opening pubs and petrol pumps in their constituencies to devote time to the job for which they were being paid.”

The report also found that work remained to be done in terms of assessing whether service standards and performance indicators have been established.

Mr Bruton added: “This means that the Government still does not know, and could not tell the consultants, when it is spending public money, what standards of service to the people it is setting for itself and, if it had such standards, whether it is achieving them.”