Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Listening to what has been said, the one thing I often hear from the public sector is the fact that reports are written, conclusions are derived from those reports and, obviously, there is a cost associated with that. A sum of €50,000 is not a small sum of money, rather it is a very substantial sum in the current climate. There are many officials employed within the public sector, including the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, and I cannot understand why these reports have to be undertaken by outside experts, people who do not even live in this country. How can one justify undertaking a so-called independent report and to deliver the recommendation from that report, employ the same people to finalise a recommendation that goes to the Minister? That does not make sense. One can employ a group of consultants to produce a report, with officials within the Department then scrutinising the findings and presenting a proposal to the Minister, but how can one go back and spend another €8,000 or €9,000 employing the same consultants to scrutinise the report? We are not experts but we have gone through it line by line.

It galls me when questions are asked here today about who has been consulted. We have not heard who has been consulted. Who was consulted along the seaboard? Mr. Reynolds referred to the fact that staff at Valentia Island and Malin Head were consulted. They may have been consulted. Their proposals were included in draft one and their recommendations were removed in draft two. Mr. Mullen indicated that the Department responded to draft one. If the Department did respond to draft one, why were the recommendations of the ordinary staff who work 24-7 and give all of their time in Malin Head and Valentia Island excluded from the final report when the Department's recommendations were taken into consideration? It appears that there is some form of collusion between Irish Coast Guard senior management and Fisher Associates. If there is no such collusion, why the hell are Fisher Associates still on the table? We are here today to talk about the report and now we find out that Fisher Associates will come back, get €8,000 or €9,000 and decide the outcome of the independent report in conjunction with the management of the Coast Guard and Department officials. We are wasting our time here if that is where we are going.