Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise two other points relating to public confidence and accountability in the spending of taxpayers' money. Having been Minister for Health, the Taoiseach will be very familiar with the section 38 and section 39 organisations. They expend about €5 billion of taxpayers' money annually. There is no public accountability because they are not directly accountable to the Oireachtas in any manner. Where such organisations receive the majority of their funding from the taxpayers, there should be some accountability to the Oireachtas. We need to ensure there is accountability.

The same applies to public private partnerships. They talk about commercial sensitivity. Some of these contracts run for 25 or 30 years. It is not possible to wait for 30 years to examine whether a project was good or bad value for money. There needs to be a mechanism for public scrutiny of some of these public private partnerships after a short period. That will happen during the course of Project Ireland 2040. It would create greater public confidence if people could see some transparency.