Garda Ombudsman makes 'plea for help'

Justice Mary Ellen Ring, chair of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, wrote to the PAC to describe staffing levels as being 'not in line with other civil service departments or agencies'.

A letter from the Garda Ombudsman to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) describing inadequate resources to cover caseloads has been described as a “plea for help”.

Justice Mary Ellen Ring, chair of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, wrote to the PAC to describe staffing levels as being “not in line with other civil service departments or agencies”.

Justice Ring added that if Gsoc had just 1% of Garda personnel, its number of investigators would rise from 40 to 177.

“Their letter is a plea for help,” PAC chair Brian Stanley told the committee, adding that it would be his hope the commission could be brought before PAC in due course given, as Justice Ring mentioned in her letter, Gsoc “welcomes the opportunity to discuss this with the committee at any stage”.

Children's hospital cost overruns

The last budget estimate for the National Children's Hospital  was for roughly €1.7bn in 2019. 

The PAC also heard that it is imperative that the Department of Health or the National Paediatric Health Development Board be brought before the committee “as quickly as possible” with regard to the ongoing National Children’s Hospital building cost overruns.

“It needs to be made clear to the department that we’re expecting them to come in to discuss how the cost overruns have been so far beyond anyone’s imagination,” Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy said.

The last budget estimate for the hospital was for roughly €1.7bn in 2019. 

“This committee has heard that we could be looking at €2bn and rising,” Mr Carthy said.

Mr Stanley meanwhile described the secretary-general of the Department of Health Robert Watt’s statement that the cost of the project is likely to remain commercially sensitive “for an extended period” as being “enormously frustrating”.

Separately, independent TD Verona Murphy told the hearing the reason that An Bord Pleanála has lost 90% of the legal objections to its decisions is because those decisions have been “unlawful”.

“That is all the courts deal with,” she said. “It is an absolutely disgraceful waste of public funds.”