Cynthia Ní Mhurchú MEP has launched a major public campaign aimed at reforming public spending, public procurement, and driving taxpayer value for money across the European Union. Working in tandem with Albert Dolan TD, the campaign links groundbreaking national tracking initiatives in Ireland directly to the upcoming legislative phase of procurement reform at European level.
At the centre of the joint campaign is a simple, non-negotiable democratic principle: every single euro of public money should be entirely traceable from tender to contract, from contract to delivery, and from delivery to final payment.
Speaking from Brussels today, Cynthia Ní Mhurchú MEP stated:
“Public procurement sounds technical, but it is how roads are built, hospitals are equipped, schools are maintained, public transport is delivered, digital systems are bought, and major infrastructure is delivered. It is one of the central ways public money becomes real thingsin people’s lives.”
“The questions people want answered are not complicated: Who got paid? What were they contracted to deliver? Did they deliver it? What did it cost? These should be basic questions for any public system to answer. Too often, they are not easy enough to resolve. The State can collect taxes with extraordinary precision, but once public money is spent, the trail becomes much harder to follow. That should concern everyone who cares about delivery, value for money, and trust in public institutions.”
The campaign scales up the successful proof-of-concept led by Albert Dolan TD and his Team in Ireland, who has already compiled a public spending database covering more than 200 public bodies and tracking over €100 billion in payments , utilizing existing publication obligations and EU open data laws (such as S.I. No. 376/2021). The campaign aims to embed these standards into the upcoming EU Public Procurement Act and leverage Ireland’s 2026 Presidency of the Council of the European Union to establish structural accountability across all Member States.
Ní Mhurchú highlighted that while public procurement is currently heavily regulated up to the point of contract award, a critical “missing link” exists in the post-award chain of delivery, invoice, and payment. This lack of a connected, systematic view prevents governments from benchmarking costs, managing supplier concentration across borders, and identifying project risks early enough.
Ní Mhurchú continued:
“The award of a contract is not the end of the story. It is the starting line. The real question is whether the public got what it paid for. This is not about creating one giant new IT system; it is about connecting the records that already exist. It is the open banking move for public spending: set the standard, require the keys, and let the systems talk to each other.
“If Europe can build systems that allow money to move across borders, surely we can build systems that allow public spending to be traced, understood, and scrutinized. This is a national reform agenda and a European reform agenda. If public money has a journey, the public should be able to follow it.”
The campaign will roll out over the coming weeks through a coordinated series of short videos and detailed written policy analysis examining how a “golden thread” of common identifiers can link tenders, awards, contracts, invoices, and payments seamlessly across the Single Market.
