Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. The Seanad had the benefit of his wisdom recently and was very supportive of him.

It appears that the way public life is reported in Ireland is that an argument on how universal health insurance might or might not be financed is based not on the issues, but on whether Ministers A an B play golf on the same golf course. I welcome what I have read about this plan. All of the issues should be discussed openly in the way that appears to have been the case here. It is great when discussion is done in the open and on the issues because the Department has a watchdog role.

The Minister spoke about the commitments made by the Government. One of the commitments I recall was that the Department of the Taoiseach, which it was felt had grown too large under previous Taoisigh and under social partnership, would become a small Cabinet office. The Department is ten times the size it was when the Constitution was drawn up. One must wonder why the Taoiseach appoints Ministers. Presumably, if one was to control numbers, it would be by reducing the numbers of Departments. In the early days of the State, the small Cabinet office of the time wrote the Constitution, secured the return of the treaty ports and kept Ireland out of the war. Therefore, it must have been a very able group of 20 in that office.

In regard to capital, the Minister mentioned property. My fear is that there are people in the property and construction sector who would be delighted to do the same thing all over again and regularly we see newspaper supplements trying to create the ingredients of a new bubble. We are lucky we have had no money to inject capital into this area, but if we are going to start providing capital, we need appraisal procedures. Plans must be published in advance and we must separate the promotion of a project from how it will be financed. There is scope for reform in this area.

I welcome the proposals on lobbying. The Leader of the Seanad does not allow much lobbying. We had to guillotine the Finance Act in the Seanad, but some of the provisions towards the end of the Bill seemed to provide for the so-called "fiscal termites". These are people who seem to have a way of getting fiscal privilege for their sectors. It seems that President Obama believes, and the same opinion was expressed in Davos, that the ability of some sectors to negotiate fiscal privilege for themselves is a major source of increasing inequality. This is an issue of concern for all of us.

The Minister's review document includes a graph on page 8 on Irish Water. It is not a great example of reform as we still do not know the price of water or the free allowance and so on. However, I hope the talent in the Department will ensure we get this right. Page 20 of the document describes the new rostering in the Garda Síochána. When the Minister for transport was in the Seanad yesterday, we asked whether check points for alcohol testing could be signed off on by a sergeant rather than a superintendent, but I regret to say we did not get anywhere with that. It is something that could be considered. The Minister mentioned the review of the Garda in appendix 2(a) on page 64.

The document refers also to the Irish Aviation Authority and the Commission for Aviation Regulation. The decision on that was correct. However, the Commission for Aviation Regulation was overruled, to secure a massive - over 40% - increase in airport charges, which we are now trying to unwind to get a growth in tourism. The Minister has been criticised in regard to the 10% of bus routes to be tendered out and it has been suggested that 10% is too high. I think it is too low. The system began in 1932, and we are just allowing 10% to be competitive in 84 years.

At that rate, it would take 840 years to have a competitive bus business in the country.