Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State keeps saying "I myself", but we are not legislating for the Minister of State. He knows that once the provision is there, sooner or later somebody will use it to raise a bit of cash. If I had the time, I would love to be able to trawl through all the Bills passed by the Oireachtas since the 1920s and count the number of times a provision like this was introduced. A Minister would come into the House and say that he does not intend doing this, but is just creating a possibility that it might happen, although not on his watch. I would love to find out how many fees were introduced because of a legislative provision introduced in this nice soft way. A Minister would ask if he was being accused of putting a charge on something and would claim he was not doing so.

To protect the Minister of State's position in order that we will not have a change like this, we should oppose this section. We should ensure that not only will the Minister or the Minister or State or their officials not succumb to temptation, no future Minister will succumb to the temptation. For most Administrations, this is too big a temptation to resist in the long term when the pressure comes on.