Government queried on work with PwC in wake of scandal at Big Four firm’s Australian business

The Department of Transport is paying almost €1 million to PwC this year to improve its information technology. Eamon Ryan, the minister, has told the Dáil that PwC was awarded the contract following a procurement process and will assist his department in a “transformation programme to change the overall operational and governance model in place for IT”.

He was responding to one of a series of questions tabled by Catherine Murphy, a Social Democrats TD, who asked every government department whether they had seconded staff from PwC over the last 10 years, and whether they had availed of services or consultancy from the company.

The questions followed a controversy in Australia, where a PwC partner working with government to develop laws to crack down on tax avoidance shared confidential information with colleagues, who won business as a result. Peter-John Collins emailed other PwC offices giving details of his discussions with Australian tax officials, and wrote to a colleague in PwC Ireland in April 2015.

Australian tax officials have said they are working with international peers to explore any potential offences outside the country related to the PwC tax leaks scandal.

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Ms Murphy confirmed the Australian controversy had prompted her to table the questions, but said she had been concerned for some time about an over-reliance on the Big Four consultancies within government.

PwC will be paid €677,300 for its services, and a further €288,000 for six months’ consultancy. Mr Ryan said the support the company has given to date has been “essential in building the capacity of the existing team and sharing knowledge, as well as putting the new operating and governance model in place”.

“We should be building up expertise within departments rather than bringing it in, and building up the [consultants’] expertise, thereby giving them a direct link into government,” Ms Murphy said.

“You will always need technical expertise on a one-off, bespoke basis. But where you have residual work, expertise should be built up in the public service so you don’t have to rely on consultancies in the future.”

Michael McGrath, the finance minister, said his Department had seconded staff from PwC on four occasions over the last decade. There was no cost to the department from the arrangement on three occasions, with secondees working in the economic division, financial services division and tax division around the period 2012-15.

A secondment to the department’s fiscal stability section, between October 2012 and June 2013, had cost €78,535.

Mr McGrath said that, five years ago, PwC was contracted to provide services around the appointment of an assessor pursuant to the Anglo Irish Bank Corporation Act 2009. The contract, which lasted for two years, cost €1 million, with the bill being paid by the National Treasury Management Agency, which in turn recouped it from the special liquidation of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation.

In its response to Ms Murphy’s question, the Department of Housing said it had paid PwC a fee of €396,358 for a six-month contract in 2019 for “business requirements definition and request for tender development for Project Dion”.

Project Dion is the integrated ICT project for the management and reporting of housing programmes operated by the department, with the aim of developing a system to improve the storage of data.

Mr Ryan also said that the Department of the Environment had availed of PwC’s advisory or consultancy services six times over the last 10 years. It earned almost €3 million between 2015 and 2020 for economic and strategic advice on the National Broadband Plan, and €164,565 for three months’ advisory services in 2021.

PwC Ireland did not respond when approached for comment.

The firm’s Australian unit announced over the weekend that it was parachuting a new chief executive in from PwC’s Singapore office and selling its government advisory business to a private equity firm for just one Australian dollar as it tries to contain the fallout from the scandal.