REACTION:OPPOSITION PARTIES yesterday criticised Fianna Fáil and Tánaiste Brian Cowen for "wasting" €50 billion in the past four years without improving public services, and called on the Government to review its decentralisation programme on foot of the OECD report.
Fine Gael's finance spokesman Richard Bruton claimed Mr Cowen's "do-nothing change-nothing" approach to delivering improved public services had been "exposed for the sham that it is."
The report had "forensically exposed" the flaws in the system run by the Fianna Fáil-led Government, he said.
It had similarly outlined "the lazy habit of creating new agencies for every problem", Mr Bruton claimed, adding that Fianna Fáil has created almost 200 new quangos since 1997 - or one for every sitting Dáil week.
"It is broadly recognised that Brian Cowen has no appetite for changing the way we deliver public services or manage the public finances," Mr Bruton said.
"As we arrive at the end of the Celtic Tiger that Fianna Fáil inherited in 1997, this report confirms a low fail grade for Fianna Fáil and Brian Cowen over the wasted opportunities passed up over the years," Mr Bruton continued.
"Cowen and Fianna Fáil spent an extra €50 billion in the last four years alone, but with very little to show for it.
"This wasteful spending and reckless project management simply continued a pattern of earlier years that saw a golden opportunity to change how we deliver services thrown away."
Among the other issues highlighted by the report was "a budgeting system that pays no attention to the outcomes that are to be achieved", an "ill-conceived decentralisation programme" and "a weak management and performance culture from ministers down," Mr Bruton said.
"As incoming Taoiseach, Mr Cowen can no longer fob off responsibility for, or delay action on, public service delivery. Ireland cannot afford further drift before making decisive changes."
Labour party spokeswoman on finance Joan Burton said she hoped that the "strong warnings" in the report would convince Mr Cowen that a major review of the Government's decentralisation programme "is now urgently needed".
"Fianna Fáil has now been in power for almost 11 years and Mr Cowen has had direct responsibility for the public service for almost four years, but they have delivered little or nothing in the way of real public service reform," Ms Burton said.
"The result has been frequent waste of vast sums of public money, and services offered to the public are often below par."