Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Normally it is the board of management and the local parish priest, or the local principal in some cases. Most of these people are genuine and operate to the best of their ability but they feel that their hands are being tied as part of this process too. They cannot give the contract to the builder who built the school a couple of years back and is a good person but they give it to somebody from 80 miles away whose track record they do not know and about which they are concerned.

So many people are able to sign contracts on behalf of the Irish taxpayer, many of whom have no training in this area and maybe do it only once in their entire career, for example a school principal. Not everybody can get everything right the first time around. I am not talking about taking power away from them. We put these strictures in place to prevent them going off the rails then they turn around and say the strictures have prevented them giving the contract to someone they know. It is a circular argument so I will leave it at that but the Minister of State gets the point.

I would like the Minister of State to ultimately produce a list - I am sure the media could produce it - of all those contractors on public bodies who went bust during the term of a contract. The Minister of State or his officials should have that list on their desks, as should all Ministers, and those contractors should not be considered. The Minister of State will probably tell me that he could be sued if these people were not considered but somewhere along the line the taxpayer's interest has to come into the equation because some of those people are well known and they should not be in the frame the next time around.