Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I checked out the case the Deputy referred to. I can confirm two facts I have established. The rest of the information we will send directly to the Deputy. The application from the group in question was not ruled out of order. It was assessed using the independent criteria by ADM Limited, the agency that assesses all dormant accounts applications. It has a scoring system and we will make the scoring of the application in question available to the Deputy. I have no input into the matter but I can get the information passed on to the Deputy. The company scored the application and, according to its independent assessment method into whose creation and scoring I had no input, the application did not merit highly enough for the board to propose a grant. I have checked that and I did nothing that in any way affected the decision. Whoever informed the Deputy yesterday that the Minister had in some way changed something to make the application fail was incorrect.

This goes to the nub of the matter and raises questions of political philosophy that we have discussed. What is the role of the public representative? Is it a purely legislative role and must everything else in the State be the responsibility of non-elected persons who are answerable to nobody for their daily actions? Alternatively, should politicians, who are answerable to the people, have a part to play in matters other than legislation? I agree there may have been a situation in the past where people believed too much discretion was allowed to politicians. In this context, I am very much in favour of the new rules in respect of using objective criteria and being answerable to the Ombudsman. This ensures that once policies are decided, the methodology is followed through in a fair and equitable fashion.

Deputy Boyle raised the issue of coaching. I make no bones about acknowledging that I find out how the systems work and how to make the best application. I hope the Deputy does the same. I help worthy groups in completing applications, whether to Departments or county councils, for example. I am willing to assist with a housing application for a constituent who may not be au fait with all the rules regarding P21 forms and so on. My objective is to help such applicants to maximise their chances of success. Every Deputy worth his or salt assists constituents in this manner and there is nothing wrong with this.

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