John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I am not saying they are advisers. Let me be clear about this. I am not saying they are advisers and I am not having a go at Mr. Conlon or his two colleagues here. I am simply trying to find things out.

The Comptroller and Auditor General and his staff do the counting in each Department. They look at governance issues. They look at failures. They look at successes as well. I am not saying that the Comptroller and Auditor General would advise Mr. Conlon. I am saying that, out of that experience, the Comptroller and Auditor General might actually have something to add that would be of importance and would perhaps offer a greater control. I would always ask my accountant. The Comptroller and Auditor General is the Department's accountant.

There is a bigger picture here which can be taken up with the Minister in due course because I believe it is a failure of this Government and every other Government that they have not brought in the appropriate reforms to instill some sort of confidence in the general public that they have a handle on the type of expenditure, for example, that Mr. Conlon is talking about this year which is €12 billion this year. It is extraordinary.

For me, what gets counted gets done and I would suggest we are not counting it very well. I will be suggesting to the Minister that some form of sanction has to be introduced where there is clear failure in a Department to handle the taxpayers' money in a way that one would expect. I have always said this. One has to apply the same diligence to spending that money as Revenue does in collecting it. As a self-employed person, I can tell Mr. Conlon it is not easy to make that kind of money. When one is paying one's taxes, one wants to have some confidence that at least they will be respectful about where they got that money and diligent about how they spend it. The State does not do transparency, accountability or that diligence in terms of spend very well. That is not blaming Mr. Conlon or his colleagues. It is more of a political comment than one that Mr. Conlon can deal with it.