Thanks A Million

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From the State’s Dail100.ie website

Journalist Ken Foxe is reporting that almost €930,000 was spent on commemorations and events for the 100-year anniversary of the first sitting of Dáil Éireann.

One of the costs was €180,000 on the dail100.ie website.

Mr Foxe obtained the information through a Freedom of Information request.

Yesterday, he tweeted…

An airport VIP bill of €16,500, a near €20,000 luxury accommodation bill, and €200 for a harpist – full details of spending on Dáil 100 commemorations (Ken Foxe, TheStory.ie)

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32 thoughts on “Thanks A Million

  1. Dub Spot

    €152,478 in website “build costs”. Excuse me?

    This is preposterous.

    HTML = How To Make Loads.

    (Goes back to WordPress and Wix)

    1. eoin

      €185k all-in for the website which hasn’t had enough traffic to merit an Alexa rating. That is some spectacular waste of my money.

  2. Ron

    If there was a world cup for the most inept, incapable, incompetent waste of space politicians and civil servants, Ireland would be the winners. The challenging part would be picking who the most incompetent civil servants are to represent us. So many to pick from the cesspit

    1. phil

      You see, Ive been wondering , are they incompetent, I mean is that believable? the whole of the public sector! I’d doubt it, that would be unusual . Now I have no evidence , but Ive wondered if the whole system is corrupt. If its in our DNA , it seems to me , every service I know about being provided to the government sector seems to be priced multiples of what an individual or private sector business would pay, from replacing a toilet seat in the Dail to building a hospital. That may just be poor decisions made by procurement officers , but when the same people/businesses keep getting the contracts, and when the public howls occasionally about waste of money and are fobbed off with weak excuses about ‘cast iron contracts’ and no alternatives, I start to suspect corruption , but Im sure we have procedures and structures to protect us from that possibility , everyone cant be corrupt and we always have whistleblowers , so Im just imagining the whole thing

  3. Fact Checker

    If you go through the list in detail you fill find expenditure on………

    [WAIT]

    [KEEP WAITING]

    Exactly the kind of thing that you would expect for this kind of jamboree!

    The fact is that people kind of want their government to commemorate stuff, in a decent, but not ostentatious way. What happened is exactly that. People aren’t fools, and this stuff just serves to fill newspaper space.

    If you want you can go live in some libertarian paradise (try Somalia) where there is no one around to spend tax money on historical commemorations, but there are other downsides.

    1. Tom

      Exactly. It was a major commerative event for a nation of 5 million people.

      It’s going to cost more than your average wedding.

    2. Boj

      It is Government spending patterns like these which is why we will be strong armed into paying for water again for example. Spending/projects are almost expected to go over budget nowadays. All parties and gov bodies have gotten used to it, much like we plebs have all gotten used to USC. Take it away or demand transparency/accountability of how they will spend YOUR money and they’ll punish you with another tax to dip into. But I’m just 1 dope…I’ll just keep supplying their cut of my labour. A cut which, in my opinion, doesn’t even come close to being earned…what can I do eh…vote??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  4. Dr.Fart MD

    it’s been like this with every government. it’s not their money so they don’t care. they don’t haggle, shop around, none of that. i remember in the paper years ago, early 00s i’d say, they had a breakdown of expensive stuff the gov paid for. one item was one of those plastic bins shaped like a giant frog you see outside shops. priced at €273. I looked it up and you could get them for €60. everyone overcharges when the gov. come looking for stuff, btu the problem is the gov. just agree because.. they. dont. care. and its not just for these events, this is across the board with everything. from commemorations to childrens hospital.

    1. rotide

      Do you think 200 notes for a Harpist is expensive?
      3,500 for a video?
      3k for photography?
      400 quid for a classic car rental?

      Do you really think that this is an example of big government squandering money?

      1. Dr.Fart MD

        no i don’t, rotide. but there were a lot more things listed. you’re only naming off the cheapest bits.

    1. Dhaughton99

      Which TD’s son won the contract? That’s a shocking amount of money. Although they spent €3+ mil on JobsIreland site and still haven’t fixed it after 3 years.

  5. observer

    Poor form picking out the harpist in the list of shocking expenditure.

    Surprising that the €5k spent on a dinner for journalists wasn’t the main talking point.

  6. Andyourpointiswhatexactly?

    They could have spent more money on an editor. They’ve spelled the name of one of the first TDs incorrectly.

  7. rotide

    I’m a little confused here. Barring the website costs and one or two others, most of these sums are exactly what one would pay for these things.

    Again, barring the website, there’s no sign of much overspend here?

  8. Zaccone

    This actually all seems pretty reasonable, apart from the website. Thats extortionate.

    The site should have cost at absolute most about a third of that. And that would be an expensive site, even at that price.

    1. Cian

      I wonder does that price include the translation of the content into Irish. That can be very expensive .

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