Watch out for the fake outrage of Patrick O'Donovan, Minister for Arts, Culture, Communications, Media and Sport. He has been giving interviews about €7 million spent by the Arts Council on a computer system that never worked.
But the last FF/FG government was kept ‘fully abreast’ of this spending. They just said nothing until the general election was over.
O'Donovan never says who got the money. But here they are:
- Codec was given 2 million euro for its role as a ‘technology partner'
- Ergo Managed Services was given another 2 million euro for ‘quality assurance’
- Expleo got €730,000 for ‘project management’.
Private companies rip off public money using business-speak. The CEO of Codec, Ronan Stafford, has this on his website. ‘Too many IT transformation projects result in excessive costs, unacceptable business disruption, and a high rate of failure’.
The joke is on us – as long as we keep paying out public money to consultants.