By Cianan Brennan,Irishexaminer.com

Copyright irishexaminer

It comes in the wake of a scandal at the Arts Council, which saw a long-awaited multimillion-euro IT system scrapped when it ran massively over-budget.

That controversy, which saw director of the council Maureen Kennelly step away from her role after being denied a contract renewal, involved a project budgeted at €3m.

Some €6.5m had been spent when the plug was pulled, with estimated loss to the taxpayer of €5.3m.

The Department of Education project involved the migration of the 10 education and training boards onto a “SUN/P2P financial management system platform” which was already in use by the remaining six boards, it said in an update for the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

The PAC had queried the budget spend, which was labelled as non-compliant procurement within the department’s 2023 accounts.

‘Contingency measure’

Bernie McNally, the secretary general at the Department of Education and Youth, said that the project existed as a “contingency measure” to “ensure business continuity” after attempts to procure a new system via an open competition had proven unsuccessful.

“The financial management systems operating in the 10 ETBs at the time were out of support and at end of life, with a risk that they might fail,” she told the PAC.

Regarding the overspend itself, Ms McNally said the difference had resulted from “a series of essential change requests that were executed to add functionality and services that were not comprehended within the original contract”, adding that those changes had been “vital to achieve the required outcomes of the project”.

She said that each of the changes — which included the addition of contract training and tender management modules to the original specification — had been “business critical”, and had not been included in the original contract as “there was an urgency in putting the contract in place during the covid pandemic”.

Ms McNally said there had been “clear justification” for the changes, which she said had given rise “to significant added value to the ETB sector” with “full value for money” having been achieved.

However, Social Democrats TD and PAC member Aidan Farrelly said he “cannot ignore the trend that is apparent when it comes to significant overruns when it comes to IT projects everywhere”.

“When it comes to design, procurement and implementation, I would question whether the competency is there to manage IT projects,” Mr Farrelly said, adding that “the State needs to take a more proactive role in oversight of significant IT projects when it comes to public spending”.

A spokesperson for the department said that “it’s important to clarify that there was no overspend on the project itself”, stating that “the issue relates to the contract value, not the project budget”.