Message to the Irish Department of Finance

The feedback I'm getting from consultant colleagues in relation to the hoops they have to go through to certify money in interim accounts is interesting. Basically the Engineers working on behalf of the Local Authorities must have every item accounted for when only producing an Interim Certificate. This sounds ridiculous to a certain degree. For example the other day I could not get a 'sum on account' certified on an interim certificate for Engineer's phone calls (payable under the contract and I estimated a reasonable gross value on the job to date at€500.00). The Interim Certificate or Payment wouldn't be made until such time as the phone bills were produced. Fair enough policy when you think about it......

This attention to detail is not the fault of the Engineer but was due to the audit's going on within the DOF ever since the GCCC forms were produced (over 3 years now). In the old days sums on account would be paid for such an item. In general we would gather the phone bills on a quarterly basis for submission or even wait until final account stage and then submit the full documentation.

This leads me to a Message / Question to the Department of Finance:
Why the hell didn't you guys take as much care with everything else you were supposedly in control of over the last 5 years?

It's a pity the other ills that fell on this Country weren't kept in check in such a similar fashion as our Construction Industry.

Oh wait a minute .........Then again it doesn't surprise me why such focus was on the Construction Industry (Public Sector Area of the Market) as we were the ones getting bad press for the last 10 years or so (project overruns, wrong initial cost projections...... blah de blah).

This Government was led more by what the papers and media were saying rather than what the country's real citizens and real honest to goodness workforce were saying. As long as the Fianna Fail machine was keeping the press happy they were happy and nothing else really mattered.