Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

There is a wider issue here regarding the fact that we deal with a lot of these issues by way of inquiry; we do not catch them in real time. There is a perception of a saving, by virtue of the fact that we do not have organisations like for example, the Corporate Enforcement Agency that has been set up, properly resourced. It was guaranteed 16 members of the Garda but only has seven at the moment. It still does not have its full complement. It cannot do its work if it does not have the resources. If we do not have organisations that can properly regulate and enforce, we will then end up paying in retrospect by way of inquiries. We really have to grasp the nettle on this.

I have a previous response that I got from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform going back to 2019 on this issue. The cost of inquiries at the end of 2018 was €457 million, almost half a billion euro, and it lists those costs down. That is right across all Departments, where each would have been the parent Department, whereas this is exclusively related to the Department of the Taoiseach. Some of them were included in this response. I can look at the response this committee got in 2019 and at the one we are discussing at the moment. The investigation into certain matters relating to An Garda Síochána is down at €3.5 million. When I look at this reply that I got previously, it makes me wonder if it was the same inquiry. I am not sure if there were two. This one is about a tribunal of inquiry into certain gardaí in Donegal. That may well be a different one but that was €68 million. The point I am trying to make is that I am not sure whether we are getting a full overview with this. There is a list here and we probably need to get that list from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in respect of the entire overview, if we are going to compare like with like, because some of the figures do not make sense.