Taxpayers forked out 156m last year on consultants to advise the government, over twice the 74m paid out in 2004, according to figures from the Department of Finance's 2007 spending estimates. And the consultants' bill is set to further rise to 167.5m this year, or 3.2m a week.

In late 2005, as the government faced mounting criticism over its excessive use of outside consultants, Bertie Ahern ordered a new system for the management and control of IT projects. But rather than reduce the use of consultants, the Department of Finance simply excluded certain IT consultancy costs from its 'expenditure on consultancy' table, published at the back of its book of estimates every year.

The 2006 estimates, for example, showed the government spent 131m on consultants in 2005 and planned to spend 134m in 2006. But in the 2007 book of estimates, consultancy costs had mysteriously plummeted by almost 50%, with a spend of 72.5m listed for 2006 and 85.5m estimated to be spent in 2007.

However, this 'reduction' did not arise from any cutbacks; instead, a footnote to the table explained that spending on "IT external service provision" . . .previously included in the table . . . had this time been excluded.

Re-inserting these costs more than doubles the actual spend in 2006 to 156m and the estimated spend for 2007 also doubles to 167.5m.

The massive jump in consultancy expenditure comes a month after the publication of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General showing that, in 2004 and 2005, 43% of the 699 consultancy projects were never evaluated for delivering value for money.

The C&AG report also showed that consultancy group Accenture (previously Andersen Consulting) was the consultant most frequently used by the government, receiving over 39m for eight projects in 2004 and 2005. Some way behind in second place was IT consultancy Bearing Point, which secured 11.3m in contracts.

Accenture is headed up by one of the country's most successful businesswomen, Vivienne Jupp. She was appointed by the government to the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the public sector which sets the wages of the Taoiseach, ministers, TDs, judges and other top public servants. The body is due to issue its pay report at the end of the year.