Denis O'Donovan (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister to the House. The purpose of the Bill is to abolish the Dormant Accounts Board and to vest the powers in the Minister. I have no great difficulty with that; I can trust this Minister and, I hope, his successors in time to look after it. The Minister has paid tribute to the Dormant Accounts Board which has done excellent work in coming up with the money that was lying dormant in accounts. After a set number of years it was taken into this kitty, so to speak, and several valuable projects, including a number I can think of in the Cork South-West constituency, benefited. Over the years it has funded youth cafés and other such matters. This continues the policy of the previous Government which believed that the Dormant Accounts Board had more or less outlived its purpose and that a new approach was needed. In this regard the Minister has the support of this side of the House for the Bill, which I wish a speedy passage.

I believe the funding from dormant accounts has now peaked. It is like oil resources. There was a substantial amount in the kitty seven or eight years ago and now obviously there is less of it there. It is appropriate that the board should be wound down. While I do not say this disparagingly of the board, it gets rid of another quango, so to speak.

While I may be incorrect I believe this all came about in an ironic way following a major investigation led by the former Deputy, the late Jim Mitchell, into the accounts in foreign banks. People were putting money offshore and a lot of money came in from that. As the Revenue and banks trawled through accounts, they discovered a lot of money where there was no traceability of the account holders and consequently it came up with the Dormant Accounts Fund, which has done considerable good work using unclaimed money.

I recently looked through an old bank account to ascertain if there was any small amount left there. I discovered that in an account of my late mother who died in 1983 there was still some £70 or £80 left. The name Mary O'Donovan is quite common in west Cork and I suppose it was a small amount of money. I advised the bank she was long gone and there was no point in taking out a grant of probate or administration for the amount in question. It just goes to show there are still small pots of money throughout the country in various banks. If the dormant accounts idea was to be put into practice, perhaps the Minister might say that in these difficult financial times - I am putting on my legal hat here, although I have not practised for 14 years - the State and the Exchequer are entitled to get their hands on money or property when there is an end to the line of succession.

This Bill is welcome for reasons already outlined. The Minister is going in the right direction and it will be neater for him to take charge of it. With the public expectation being that this money will be properly dispersed, I have no doubt that he will ensure that such an expectation is met. I have no doubt that such money will be used for very valuable purposes to deal with people who are socially disadvantaged, educationally disadvantaged or who may have disabilities. That is a good idea, so I wish the Bill a speedy passage through the House. It has the full support of this side of the House.