Irish Examiner view: Casual use of public funds is corrosive

Accountability in managing our public resources is far too lacking

The State's management of public finances is sorely lacking. Picture: Pexels

Two years ago, before the pandemic changed everything, a figure just below €90bn flowed through Government coffers. Revenues rose by 6.2% to €89.1bn while expenditure grew by 5.0% to €87.6bn. An increase in taxes of €4.1bn — up 6.7% — drove higher revenues. Tremendous as these figures seem, even the €90bn top line, they are just a little more than half the personal wealth attributed to Amazon's Jeff Bezos. How he, or any of the world's 2,755 billionaires — up 660 in the last year according to Forbes — manage their wealth can only be a matter of conjecture but it is unlikely that those employed to do so can anticipate a lengthy career should there be significant leakage.

It is, of course, comparing apples and oranges to apply the same expectations around financial management to public expenditure where entirely different schemes, influences, and objectives apply. That difference has not, however, stopped those of a particularly crusty worldview regularly suggesting that one captain of industry or other, invariably a strident, uncompromising figure, should be asked to, say, "sort out the health service".