Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

At the start of the Minister's presentation in the last section, he mentioned how busy they were with so much going on and so much debate going on. This particular secondment was no small thing. It is important to say that in flashing neon lights. This country has been hammered in previous generations because of an inner circle of people who benefited from the largesse of the State. Most people would reasonably agree that if they had the qualifications for a certain job, it should be open for them to apply for a State job and then the best person who would get that job. That would be a reasonable assumption by citizens living in this Republic. The salary was €30,000 higher for this than for any other full-time professor in Trinity College at the time. We are talking about ongoing ten-year periods of time where a CMO was to be seconded but never going back to the CMO job. It was a job that was created for an individual. No matter how good the individual was, that is what it was. Under any fair objective evaluation, this was a botched secondment.

The Minister mentioned accountability. I think there was an earlier Freudian slip because he threw in the word “transparency”. All these committees do is provide transparency. Asking questions and providing is transparency. However, accountability has two important ingredients. It must have acceptance of wrongdoing and it must have a cost. If it does not have acceptance of a wrongdoing and a cost, it is not accountability. One of the reasons this country is cursed in terms of the administrative mistakes we make over and over again – I can think of the children’s hospital – is because there is no accountability over and over again. That repeated lack of accountability makes citizens’ heads explode outside of the walls of Leinster House. I might finish on this and then pass it over. Who will implement the recommendations of this report?