Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I will start with a comment which is related to my question about what we will start spending less on. It concerns the materials we got from the Minister's Department. Obviously a lot of good things are happening and this is not to talk down any of the good news but this reads like propaganda. It is not balanced committee-level material. There is nothing in this programme about what is not working or has not worked, it is just lists of good news. This makes it impossible to take it seriously as a balanced briefing. I ask the Minister to discuss that with her officials.

It is great to have good news and we should celebrate it but a report to the committee from the Executive which says everything is brilliant, there is nothing to talk about and nothing is going wrong is just not credible. One of the most important roles of the Oireachtas is to hold the Executive to account for the money it spends. The materials we receive from the Minister's Department are meant to help us interrogate how that money is being spent but these materials do not do that at all. They just say that everything is great, there is nothing to see here and here is what we are doing. I know it is not the Minister's fault, and this is not a political attack in any way, but we cannot do our job of investigating expenditure if we do not have balanced reporting from her officials.