Fianna Fáil TD Albert Dolan has launched a new online tracker consolidating more than €78.5bn in public spending.
Speaking to Gript in an interview today, the 26-year-old Public Accounts Committee member described the tool as a dataset that “democratises the understanding of the public finances.”
“What we are launching here today is a public payments slash purchase order data set,” Dolan said.
“Essentially this data set is going to be available for the public to see exactly how the money is being spent across the state over the past few years.”
The Galway East TD, who is from an accounting background before entering politics, said the tracker was created over 2 years by compiling purchase order data from more than 190 State entities.
“Since 2011 state entities have been mandated to publish their purchase orders over €20,000,” he explained.
“We used a sophisticated system to pull that together and essentially show where the money is going at a state entity level and then down right to the individual suppliers.”
According to Dolan, the information now made public covers more than 400,000 transactions and stretches back over a decade.
“What our data set allows people to do is they can use this themselves,” he said.
“It democratises the understanding of the public finances so that the person at home today can understand how money is being spent, where it’s going and what they can anticipate.”
Among the findings, Dolan said the records confirmed a long-observed pattern that local authorities spend disproportionately in the final quarter of the year.
“This is something that people knew colloquially on the ground,” he said.
“But now we actually have the graphs to underpin it.”
Asked whether increased public scrutiny might expose more controversies similar to recent criticism of a bike shed project at the National Maternity Hospital, Dolan rejected the idea that transparency would harm government.
“I’m not concerned with it and I don’t think government sees that as a headache,” he said.
“Government ultimately wants to be efficient, wants to move at speed and wants to see projects delivered.”
He said focusing on relatively small expenditures risked overshadowing far larger items.
“We have a health service that spends over €27 billion yet people are fixating on €100,000 in a tender for a bike shed,” he remarked.
“The interesting thing as well is…the National Maternity bike shed, that is open for contractors to bid on at the moment.”
He added that if other firms could provide the project more cheaply, the tendering process would reflect that.
“I remember the time of the first bike shed, people said it could be done for €25,000 or €30,000 and in essence it probably could be,” he said.
“But let people bid on it and let them win that bid at the lower amount.”
Dolan also said he would bring forward legislation in the coming weeks to improve procurement reporting.
“It’s going to link payments to tenders, it’s going to ensure that there’s unique supplier IDs across the procurement space, and also the amount of state bodies that aren’t publishing their contract award notices,” he said.
“We have to get the basics right, and then, you know, what gets measured gets managed.”
The dataset launched today represents Phase 1 of what Dolan described as a wider effort to make public procurement more transparent and trackable.
According to information provided with the launch, €14.6bn moved through the payments system in 2024 alone, representing more than 71,000 transactions.
Individuals can view the tool below.