Fintan O'Toole omitted to mention benchmarking as a possible addition to his list of public sector "white elephants". It is costing over a billion euro a year and rising in line with future wage increases - about €13 billion over the next ten years. Introduced ahead of the last general election, no evidence has ever been published to justify benchmarking other than a series of innocuous, post-award, self-serving reports. For the same expenditure, we could have employed about ten percent more gardai, teachers, health workers and so on.
Given that there is talk of a new round of benchmarking appearing ahead of the next election, surely there is an urgent need for an independent, transparent review of the basis and benefits achieved to date.
Letter published in the Irish Times on 12th March 2005.
