New PAC chairman John Brady TD vows to hold government to account on how it spends taxpayers’ money
25 April 2025
Newly-appointed chairperson on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), John Brady TD, has vowed to hold the government and state bodies to account for how they spend taxpayers’ money.
Deputy Brady made his comments after Mary Lou McDonald today announced that he would chair the PAC as one of a record seven Sinn Féin chairpersons – four men and three women – of Oireachtas committees in this Dáil term.
The Wicklow TD brings a wealth of experience of the committee to the role, having served on the PAC in the last Dáil.
Teachta Brady said:
“The public deserve to have confidence that the taxes they pay to the state are spent appropriately and deliver value for money, and it is the job of the Public Accounts Committee to hold the government and state bodies to account.
“In the last Dáil, I was proud to play my part on PAC as we exposed the financial scandals at RTÉ and the colossal mismanagement by government of the National Children’s Hospital project.
“People are sick to their back teeth of seeing their taxes wasted by successive Fianna 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 €1.5bn overspend on the Children’s Hospital.
“Four months into 2025 and there is no end in sight, and no accountability – nearly half a million euro spent by the OPW on a perimeter wall, almost €7m wasted by the Arts Council on a failed IT project, while my Sinn Féin colleague Mark Ward has uncovered that the HSE has thrown away €7m since 2022 for not paying their bills on time.
“Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the state agencies their governments are supposed to oversee have been wasting taxpayers’ money at extreme levels.
“The culture of waste and unaccountability that they have overseen has to stop and as chair of the PAC, I will ensure that those responsible are held to account.
“There’s important work ahead, and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in. I intend to work constructively with all committee members to make the PAC as effective as it can be.”
