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

No, I am putting my questions. The Minister will respond or we can get a response in writing, whichever he chooses. The Minister knows that the population will increase and age and asserts that we should be considering long-term issues. No one believes that the Department will be able to provide a service with an increase in expenditure of just 0.5% in each of the next three years, yet that is what this document claims. I reject any document that has such an assumption built into it because it is not accurate.

In the Minister's Budget Statement, which was based on this comprehensive review, a document that he distributed that day, he referred to €2.2 billion for social housing. I told him that I did not accept the plan's credibility, as much of it was based on what NAMA would do despite NAMA never having delivered on its promises on social housing. The plan is no more genuine just because the Minister referred to it on budget day.

We examine comprehensive Government expenditure. This document excludes interest paid on the national debt, which is the single largest item of Government expenditure at approximately €8 billion. It excludes payments of in the order of €1.5 billion that Ireland makes to the EU each year. It excludes payments for the running of the Oireachtas and the Judiciary. The Minister knows that they are included in the Central Fund, but they are Government expenditure. It excludes expenditure on public private partnerships and as well as agencies' off-balance sheet items. The Minister cannot call this document a "comprehensive expenditure report" if it excludes €10 billion of Government expenditure that the Dáil is not allowed to debate. We are used to that, though. Judging by what happened this morning, the Government does not like Dáil debates.

This report is anything but comprehensive. It is a piecemeal document and ignores all previous missed targets, for example, last December's Supplementary Estimates, because it was published in October. This fairy tale report is full of the Minister's wishful thinking and is a further example of one of his flawed documents. He has not issued a document that has stood the test of 12 months. This one was out of date within two months because of the Supplementary Estimates. He should have come to the committee with a corrected version because this is more a work of fiction than of fact.