Deloitte sought over €166k for 37-page report

Consultants Deloitte initially demanded over €166,000 for a 37-page report on the Government’s €3.6bn accounting error, Finance Minister Michael Noonan has confirmed.

This month, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee John McGuinness described the report as “an appalling waste of taxpayers’ money”.

Now, Minister Noonan has confirmed that Deloitte initially sought €166,111 (incl Vat), which works out at €4,489 per page of the 37-page report.

However, Deloitte received just over one-third of what they originally sought after negotiations on price with the Department of Finance.

In a written Dáil reply to Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou MacDonald, Mr Noonan stated: “Deloitte submitted an initial estimate for the work at a fee of €135,050 (excluding expenses and VAT), which was subsequently reduced through negotiations to €50,000, excluding expenses and Vat, provided that expenses cannot exceed 10% (€5,000) of the cost quoted for the work which constituted a fixed price paid on completion.”

Deloitte has received fees of €4.8 million for work from the National Asset Management Agency since the agency was established.

Mr Noonan confirmed the Department of Finance didn’t publicly tender for the works on the accounting error “given the urgency of this investigation, combined with the specialised nature of the matters to be covered by the review”.

He said: “I am informed that, because the engagement with Deloitte was not a ‘time and rates’ contract, but rather a fixed fee arrangement irrespective of how long the work took to complete, the question of an hourly rate does not arise.”

The Deloitte report, along with an internal report, had concluded there had been too much duplication of effort between Finance and the Central Statistics Office, failures in communications and reporting, and a lack of resources that left the compiling and checking of key statistical work in the hands of one overstretched individual.

The secretary general of the department when the accounting error occurred, Kevin Cardiff, was rejected for the post of European Court of Auditors by a budgetary committee of the European Parliament by one vote in November last year. The European Parliament later overturned the recommendation by the budget committee to nominate Mr Cardiff to the post which carries a salary of €276,000 per year.

Deloitte declined to comment yesterday.