'This will be fully investigated' - Tánaiste wants answers as €236k spent to make room for unused printer

The Tánaiste wants a full investigation to establish why €236,000 was spent adapting an area in Kildare House for a hi-tech printer which is not now being used due to an industrial relations standoff.

Simon Coveney said state agencies and the houses of the Oireachtas should be “leading the way in terms of good management and value for money” and that this apparent waste of public money should not have happened.

“I’d like to know how that happened. I’d like to know the details in terms of how this happened before making any informed commentary on it,” he said.

“Certainly we need to understand what happened here, why mistakes were made, and why it cost so much to fix it, because we can’t be wasting money in that way.

This will be fully investigated now and I think we will get a detailed report in terms of the mistakes that were made, how they were made and why money was wasted. That shouldn’t happen.

He was reacting to an Irish Times story at the weekend which revealed how Oireachtas officials miscalculated the measurements required for the state-of-the-art €808,000 Komori printer to fit into either of the two printing rooms in Kildare House.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show the Oireachtas estimated the building work required to accommodate the printer - taking down walls and embedding structural steel to give the printer the required height clearance it needs to operate - would cost up to €236,000.

The 2.1m high by 1.9m wide printer was delivered by the UK manufacturer to Ireland on December 5, 2018, but it had to be placed in storage in Ballymount Industrial Estate, with the company’s Dublin agent, Portman Graphics, because the adaptation works had not been completed.

While the first four months of storage were free, it cost €2,000 a month thereafter, with the total cost reaching €12,000 when the printer was finally installed on September 28, 2019.

Even though the printer is now in place, it is not being used due to an industrial relations standoff between the Oireachtas and staff tasked with using the machine, who say they need to be remunerated for work that requires up-skilling.