Civil servants should not be blamed for a massive overspend in Northern Ireland that followed a years-long power vacuum in Stormont, a union has said.
The FDA has hit out at recent criticism of the Northern Ireland Civil Service over a £2.45bn overspend on major capital projects that was unearthed last year. A Northern Ireland Audit Office report last year found cost overruns across most of the 77 major capital projects managed by Stormont departments between April 2019 and 31 August 2023.
This week, the deputy chair of Stormont’s finance and audit committees, Diane Forsythe, said the “scale of financial mismanagement” in the NICS was “deeply concerning”.
“This level of overspending is completely unacceptable, and what is even more alarming is the failure of the NICS to address it,” she said – adding that the overspend “raises serious questions about oversight, accountability, and the responsible use of taxpayers’ money”.
But FDA national officer for Northern Ireland Robert Murtagh said civil servants should not be used as “scapegoats”. He urged legislators to look instead at the “root cause” of the overspend, pointing to the fact that the Northern Ireland Executive has not been in place for five of the last eight years.
“It is ministers who are elected by the public to deliver on these projects. So I think there’s a wide range of systemic issues here… I think that it is a disservice to look at the root causes of this overspend and not to think about the political instability, the near-permanent crisis that has defined our politics for the last eight years,” he told Radio Ulster.
Forsythe’s comments came after NICS head Jayne Brady appeared before Stormont’s Public Accounts Committee last week alongside Neil Gibson, the accounting officer at the Department of Finance, to give evidence as part of the group’s inquiry into major projects.
MLAs question whether NICs board has sufficient oversight of spending
During the session, PAC chair Daniel McCrossan said that at her last appearance before the committee in October, Brady had said she had shown leadership by reconvening the NICS board – which provides strategic leadership of the work of the NICS in support of the Northern Ireland Executive – in February 2023.
However, he said she had not given any examples of how that had delivered improvements for major capital projects in the three years since she became head of the NICS.
McCrossan asked: “Given that accounting officers are accountable to their ministers, and neither you, as HOCS, nor the NICS board has any authority over accounting officers, how can you and the wider NICS board be confident that you are providing effective leadership over major capital projects?”
Brady said accounting structures in Northern Ireland are a “constitutional matter and, as an official, it is not for me to opine on them”. However, she acknowledged that there is a “need for joined-up approaches to be taken across the service to ensure that we are doing all that we can at an official level”.
Brady pointed to a series of changes to scrutiny functions that have been introduced in recent years, including a new ISNI sub-committee of the NICS board, which oversees the Investment Strategy for Northern Ireland and scrutinises projects; and a data-map function embedded in all projects to enable officials to analyse them more effectively. “Some of this, as I am sure, you will have seen, is about how we get the information that is required to make informed decisions. Some of it is looking back at the root causes that have got us into this position,” she said.
Throughout the evidence session, the two officials were questioned on whether existing mechanisms provide sufficient oversight of spending. Forsythe, who also sits on the committee, questioned whether the NICS board – which receives biannual reports detailing projects and programmes – has sufficient oversight over spending.
Asked whether the board is “sighted on the specifics of time and cost overruns when it meets”, Gibson said it is not. “We are always conscious of not creating another level of bureaucracy or scrutiny,” he said.
However, he said the data-mapping exercise Brady had mentioned will give the board access to better information on projects.
And he added: “Obviously, in committees and individual departments, accounting officers have to speak to all their deadlines, delays and cost overruns, so there is already significant scrutiny there.”
Forsythe asked Brady how she and the board are able to hold departments responsible for time and cost overruns if the numbers are not presented to the board.
The NICS head outlined a series of scrutiny mechanisms in place – including departmental oversight through a project office; the ISNI committee; escalation through “gateway reviews” that identify red flags in relation to a project's readiness; and investigations.
“Ultimately, it is an accounting officer's responsibility to deliver those projects under the minister's direction,” she said.
But Forsythe said she was “concerned, as is the committee, about who has oversight on those huge projects if responsibility stops with the permanent secretary” – and asked how delays and spiralling costs could be brought under control if the NICS board is not looking at “dealing with the cost and time overruns as a collective”.
Brady said the new data will help hold departments to account and inform how cost overruns are addressed. “There is also my role as a line manager, without going over a minister's responsibility for delivery in his department. We will have information that allows us to make more qualified judgements, which will allow me to do the same,” she said.
Brady also confirmed that an ongoing external effectiveness review, led by consulting firm Baker Tilly, will evaluate the board's role and governance arrangements and the effectiveness of its decision-making, including the information that comes to the board and the decisions that it takes as a result.
Accountability mechanisms 'wholly inadequate'
In her statement this week, Forsythe said Brady and Gibson’s evidence demonstrated that accountability mechanisms to prevent overspending are “wholly inadequate”.
“The NICS board does not have proper oversight. This is a system that lacks scrutiny and operates with a mega silo mentality,” she said.
“It was even more astonishing to hear a senior civil servant, appearing before the Public Accounts Committee, indicate they did not wish to create another layer of scrutiny. That mindset must change,” she added.
“Taxpayers deserve better. Investment in public services is vital, but so too is ensuring projects are delivered on time and within budget. The NICS must urgently change its approach to achieve better outcomes with hard earned taxpayers’ money, and better accountability is key to achieving this end.”
But the FDA's Murtagh urged politicians to look instead at what he called the "root cause" of the overspending: political instability.
Speaking a year after the restoration of the Northern Ireland Executive, Murtagh noted that there is still no programme for government in place. "This is just another example of how difficult it is for the civil service to plan," he said.
"We are in unstable times and our Executive with a four-party coalition – it makes it incredibly, incredibly difficult," he added.