Why doesn't any TD vote against spending increases?

In relation to health overruns, this report by the Parliamentary Budget Office is relevant.

It is not for the faint hearted but the gist of it is that reporting programmes between the Health Vote and the HSE are misaligned so that the relationship between the Health Vote and the HSE’s budget cannot be readily understood by anybody.

Alignment of the programmes in the Vote has been a recommendation for reform since at least the Considine Report in 2008.

If information cannot be understood by either government or opposition, where does that leave accountability?

It might also explain why nobody challenges spending increases.
 
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It seems the reports mentioned above have had effect.

They reveal a chronic lack of planning and controls in managing health expenditure. The “pay and numbers strategy” which was supposed to be supplied at the beginning of each year, was actually only provided in November 2017, and again in August 2018.

“These timelines result in the Strategy having no impact on the planning and monitoring process,” it said.

It said that if legislative requirements were met by the HSE – in other words, if it complied with the law – it would help control costs.

According to this article in the Irish Times, new controls, including an oversight group made up of officials from the Public Expenditure Dept., the Health Dept. and the HSE will be initiated shortly.

The new body will monitor and control health spend and staffing within the budget allocation and develop an early warning mechanism for any deviations.
 
The new body will be able to do very little on the control side if the accountants within the HSE for example cannot pinpoint where the money is going.
 
Managers, managers everywhere but very little data so what do they use to make management decisions?
Maybe they should be called overseers?
 
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