€490,000 wall yet another scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money – Mairéad Farrell TD
28 January 2025
Sinn Féin spokesperson on Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, Mairéad Farrell TD, has described as scandalous the €490,000 spent by the Office of Public Works (OPW) to build a perimeter wall.
She called for a transparent waste audit to be carried out across government departments and state agencies to reveal the full extent of the squandering of taxpayers’ money overseen by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
Deputy Farrell made her comments after it was revealed that the cost of building a perimeter wall at the headquarters of the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) neared half a million euro, more than double the original estimates.
Teachta Farrell said:
“Here we go again. People are sick to their back teeth of seeing their taxes wasted by Fiann Fáil and Fine Gael.
“In the dying days of the last government, we had the drip-feed of shocking levels of waste – €336,000 on a bike shed, €500,000 on private jet flights for Simon Harris, €1.4m on a security hut, €9m on phone pouches, and the biggest one of all, the €1.5 billion overspend on the Children’s Hospital.
“The latest squandering of public money revealed today shows nearly half a million euro was spent on a perimeter wall. This beggars belief. Where does it end?
“Enough is enough. The public deserve to know exactly how much of their money the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments have been burning through.
“What else is going to come to light that we haven’t been told about?
“We need a transparent waste audit to be carried out right across government departments and state agencies because the reality is that we don’t know what is going on under the bonnet when it comes to the scandalous waste of public money under the watch of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
“This could be the tip of the iceberg. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been wasting taxpayers’ money at extreme levels. We need to see government departments and state agencies audited immediately.”
