The Irish Prison Service was forced to scrap a computer system last year shortly after its introduction at a cost of over €577,000, it has emerged.
Secretary general of the Department of Justice Seán Aylward told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee yesterday that the new human resource management system (HRMS) did not work and staff had lost confidence in it.
Mr Aylward, accounting officer for the service, said the system could not deal with prison officer sick leave, the most crucial issue facing the service at the time. He said more than €340,000 had been spent on software licences for the project before it was abandoned while outside consultants had got nearly €175,000.
The service has reverted to its previous computer system while other consultants have been commissioned to analyse the service's future human resource management needs.
Director general of the Irish Prison Service Brian Purcell said problems with the system had not shown up during testing but were obvious once it was up and running in prisons.
Mr Aylward said the Department of Justice had not selected the system but implemented the one chosen for the Civil Service.
He said gaps in the system had been identified in advance but "an over-optimistic view [ was] taken that [ it] could be tweaked to meet the needs of the service".
Mr Aylward said the main problem with the human resources computer programme was that it could not record sick leave of prison officers that began outside a calendar month.
He said prison officer sick leave was crucial - it was the "elephant in the corner", costing €60 million per year.
"Almost from the outset, the system was failing to meet the operational needs of the prisons. A key failing was in relation to prison officer sick leave. While the shortcomings of the [ system] in the area of sick leave might be seen as a single issue, it is nevertheless a matter of great importance to Irish Prison Service management... there were also attendant issues such as replacing sick staff on overtime, injuries on duty, addressing the problem of excessive resort to sick leave by staff and the potential for legal proceedings to be taken by staff in connection with sick leave issues."
He defended the decision to abandon the project. When they realised they were in a hole, he said, they stopped digging.
Dave Ring, principal officer in the Department of Finance, said the computer system had never been forced on anyone.
He said the department had not been formally made aware of the decision to abandon the project until last November, some weeks after the decision was taken.
