Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has now identified a target of efficiencies and savings that must be required as a result of the decision announced earlier today. I want to repeat this because other members have said it. I am not interested at this point in time in the merits of the decision, good, bad or indifferent. I am not interested in whether things would be worse three months later or whether the fiscal position would be worse if he did not take the decision.

The key issue occupying my mind and I think a number of other members' minds is that this is a budgetary scrutiny committee, which we are all attending in good faith. Hopefully, this is a new venture. However, this type of carry-on from Government is not acceptable, coming before the committee a couple of months after announcing a budget and a couple of weeks after other committees have dealt with and scrutinised Estimates and saying it will find €120 million of efficiencies which were not identified a couple of weeks beforehand but not provide a scrap of paper - not one piece of paper - to the budgetary scrutiny committee to convince us that what he has announced is in any way achievable. I say this with respect. The Minister has a responsibility to do this. He came before the predecessor of this committee, the budgetary arrangements committee, and talked in glowing terms about how the Executive and the committee need to work together. This is it now. He must provide this committee with the papers he was presented with by his Department to somehow suggest to us that €120 million of savings is somehow identifiable.