Republican News · Thursday 6 June 2002

Consultants running the state

Bluff was the name of the game in Election 2002. Jaded we were, for weeks, as Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour reduced the entire campaign to arguments over who had the best economic policy. Each party claimed authority on the issue, but the facts, this week, spoke for themselves.

Revelations this week that the outgoing government spent €313 million on consultants put paid to the idea that Charlie McCreevy is an economic expert. Half of that spent on civil service wages, the fees, to PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte and Touch, Accenture and KPMG among others, showed that government ministers - and genuine party policy - play only a peripheral role in running the economy and infrastructure of the Southern state.

Shock casualty in the elections, and former Public Enterprise minister, Mary O'Rourke, spent €131 million of the total, outgoing Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue, spending a further €66 million.

€4 million was spent by various departments on public relations, and maybe that's why so many people end up thinking that the TD with the Cheshire smile from Kildare has singlehandedly created the Celtic Tiger.