Officials accused of blocking spending clarity

Senior civil servants have been accused of blocking transparency on public spending after it emerged that 11 cost reviews of multi-million-euro public-private projects are still to be published months after the investigations finished.

Members of the cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) made the claim after the most senior officials in the Department of Public Expenditure and the Department of Education confirmed the reports have yet to be made public.

Speaking at the latest meeting of the PAC, Department of Expenditure secretary-general Robert Watt told the committee that in recent years a series of public-private partnerships for roads, school buildings, hospitals, and other developments have taken place. Mr Watt said that he is aware of a number of cost reviews that were conducted since last summer, including 10 relating to department developments and one relating to the courts service.