I welcome this opportunity to comment on the CCI report Government Department Financial Performance Indicators published in August.
The conventional wisdom among those who would offer advice to Government is that public expenditure in recent years has been rising too rapidly — much faster than inflation — but not that it is out of control as the Deputy suggests.
The CCI report focused on the increases in administration costs for various ministerial Vote groups over the period 1992 to 1995. It found that 1995 expenditure was 19.18 per cent above the 1992 base year as compared with a CPI increase of about 6.7 per cent over the same period. Individual performances ranged from a low of -2.98 per cent for the Department of Enterprise and Employment to a high of +75.28 per cent for the Department of Equality and Law Reform.
Elsewhere in its document, the CCI reports that NCSS expenditure rose at an average annual rate of 8.4 per cent in the period 1990-94, as compared with an average CPI increase of 2.7 per cent.