The cabinet has cancelled a contract with Deloitte for failing to deliver on an IT project to facilitate the hiring of external staff, broadcaster NOS reports.

Deloitte, which has already spent most of the €6m earmarked for the project, had been warned earlier for not making enough progress by the government monitoring agency BIT which keeps an eye on large ICT projects.

At the time the agency cited insufficiently defined project costs and confusion over management and roles, and the lack of a clear approach to the implementation of the new system. DigInhuur, the agency said, would not be active at the end of 2019 as planned even if the problems could be solved at a stroke.

Deloitte was given more time but was still found to be insufficiently on course. It is not clear if the infrastructure ministry will be claiming back the money, NOS said.

The Deloitte project is far from the first government IT project to run into trouble. In 2014, a parliamentary commission concluded the state is wasting between €1bn and €5bn a year on failing IT projects.