Hundreds of millions of euro in wasteful spending of public money has been revealed by the State's financial watchdog, the Comptroller and Auditor General.
In his annual report, the C&AG details questionable financial practices across a range of government departments.
Read the Comptroller and Auditor General's report
C&AG findings (click links for detail)
The report found that the Department of Social & Family Affairs is making payments in excess of entitlement as a result of fraud.
John Buckley points out that the Department recouped €255m after almost 36,000 cases were reviewed in 2008.
In the area of health, Mr Buckley discovered that accommodation costs are not collected for half of all private patients treated in public hospitals.
Public hospitals could have saved up around €360m last year if they charged and collected all of the charges owed to them by private health insurers.
The C&AG reviewed practices in 24 hospitals and found that 50% of inpatients treated privately in a public bed were not charged for their maintenance.
Almost €54.5m has been spent on the electronic voting system since 2003, according to the report.
It shows that over €3m has now been spent on storage of the abandoned voting machines since 2003.
Regarding tax, the Revenue Commissioners wrote off €129m in unpaid tax and PRSI in 2008, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Over €113m of that was accounted for by businesses which were in difficulty or had ceased to trade.
The report also highlighted an increase in the use and cost of legal, financial and economic advisors to try to resolve the problems caused by the banking and financial crises.
On policing, Mr Buckley says there needs to be greater emphasis on targets for replacing certain Garda duties with civilians.
The appointment of 900 civilians since 2005 was done in order to release gardaí to other duties. Despite the recruitment, only 144 officers were released from administrative duties.
Project Management and the building projects being under taken with the Prison Service are also mentioned in the report.
The procurement processes were examined and the report found that a framework agreement with one firm for a €2m contract in 2004 led to contracts worth €97m being carried out under the agreement with the firm up to 2007.
It was found that the State negotiated a stream of payments to buy the Westlink bridge from National Toll Roads that was higher than the company would have got if the State invoked an agreement clause to reduce or abolish toll charges.
Under the buyout the State will give NTR €50m per year until 2020. That figure is slightly higher than it would have had to pay if tolls were abolished and toll rights remained with NTR.
On the subject of the construction of a new Criminal Courts of Justice Building, it was found that the project complied with Department of Finance guidelines.
The building on the corner of Infirmary Road and Parkgate Street in Dublin is being built by a consortium led by Babcock and Brown.
The report says Irish participation in the EUFOR military deployment to Chad cost €59m to April 2009.
That money was in addition to budgeted Dept of Defence funding. Irish participation in EUFOR began in January 2008.
Ireland had paid or contracted to pay more than €73m for carbon credits at the end of February 2008, the report said.
While it reported that State run metropolitan area networks to provide high-speed broadband have not been a success.
The report concludes that the Department of Education needs to press ahead with initiatives to ensure proper primary school planning emerges.
This is necessary so that primary school accommodation demand is identified quickly and met.
