Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish Deputy Catherine Murphy the best of luck in her retirement. She has the luxury the rest of us do not have in that she knows she will not be coming back, but it is her personal choice. I have no doubt that if she was seeking re-election, she would be back. I thank her particularly for her work on this committee. She did a very important job in holding public bodies to account.

The role of holding public bodies to account for expenditure of what is essentially the Irish people’s money is a very important role. One of the stark things I have seen in my time here is not so much the fact that accounts are not properly scrutinised, because they are, but the fact that when there are glaring examples of wastage of public finances, there is virtually no accountability whatsoever. That is very disappointing. Had somebody told us at the first meeting of the public accounts committee in this Dáil term that, by the end of it, we still would not have a completion date and opening date for the national children’s hospital and we still would not know the final cost of that project, I do not think many members, and certainly people within the public, would have believed them. The fact that is the case is a national scandal. Over the course of this Dáil term, this committee has dealt with a number of blatant examples of wastage. For example, we dealt with a situation where the three leaders of Government, behind closed doors, agreed to apply the highest salary in Europe to a civil servant with no rationale. That is a finding of this and another committee of this Dáil. That has set the standard, in my view, to how public bodies operate and how they feel as to whether they are answerable to the Irish people.

The decision of the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board to refuse to attend this committee today and be answerable to the Dáil’s public accounts committee is out of order. It is only in a position to do that because of a culture that allows organisations to feel they can avoid scrutiny, even when a Dáil committee with a constitutional right requests them to do that. I absolutely agree with the proposition that we ask the incoming public accounts committee to further this issue. I hope that the incoming Dáil and Government will finally, once and for all, ensure that every public body that has ownership of moneys that ultimately belong to the Irish taxpayer is accountable and answerable for wastage of that money. I hope the incoming Dáil finally brings an end to what has been a blatant and disgraceful wastage money and a lack of accountability.