A city councillor voiced his criticism of officials handling of public funds at this week’s local authority meeting. The comments came from Councillor Padraig Conneelly regarding procurement issues which were highlighted in a Local Government audit report.
Galway City Council received a ‘clean’ audit report, but the auditor involved raised a number of issues of concern including procurement. She reviewed a sample of 29 tenders awarded by the council to determine if the price paid corresponded with the tendered price and found that 13 contracts with tender prices of €648,000 resulted in costs of €977,000.
It was also noted that tendering had not taken place in a number of areas including; the security of property (the 2014 cost for this service was €290,000 ), legal services (the 2014 cost was €260,000 ), and control of horses (the 2014 cost was €80,000 ).
Councillor Conneelly was very critical of the top table after reading the document. “This is an appalling situation where public funds are used in such a manner as this, and it is not the first time, I have been giving out about the issue of procurement for years. The report shows that €630,000 of public money was spent without the services being tendered out to see if you could get a better deal, and another €329,000 was overspent on 13 contracts. That means there was nearly one million of public funds that there is no accountability for. It is absoutely disgraceful.”
The Fine Gael councillor said there was no council staff member allocated to procurement since the end of 2012 and it was a vital role to ensure the council got the best value for money. He remarked “if councillors buy a cup of coffee and a scone at a conference for €3, we must be held accountable for it.”
He finished his speech by calling on the director of finance Edel McCormack to provide a detailed list of the 13 overspent contracts.
Fellow Fine Gael representative Pearce Flannery said he stood with Councillor Conneelly as regards finding out more information about the overspend on tenders awarded. City Mayor Frank Fahy said €1 million was a lot of money and he would like an explanation for it.
Independent councillor Terry O’Flaherty said that €80,000 for the control of horses was a staggering figure as she believed that only 80 horses were seized. “There has to be some organisation that will do that job for less.”
In reply to the issue, city CEO Brendan McGrath said the local authority awards a huge number of tenders each year, all of which are compliant. “Lest the message go out that this council is not concerned about procurement, it is something we take very seriously. There was a resource deficit in procurement in 2015 which arose due to statutory leave. The council is currently progressing the recruitment of additional procurement expertise.”
Mr McGrath said in all public works contracts, particularly the more complex ones, delays and variations are inevitable leading to increases in both price and materials. He cited the lowering of the road under the bridge at Lough Atalia as an example. “You run the risk of running into problems dealing with rock, contaminated soil, etc. And these cannot be foreseen until you start a job. I will happily provide details of all the tenders that money was overspent on.”
