Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I move:

That Dáil Éireann,

deploring the shocking waste of taxpayers money highlighted in the recent Prime Time Investigates programme and a number of recent reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General including, among others:

—the huge over-run in the cost of the roads programme in the early years of the National Development Programme, which means that the eventual cost will be more than €16 billion rather than the €7 billion originally estimated;

—the specific findings of the Interim Report of the Hearings of the Public Accounts Committee, published on May 12th, that identified a number of road projects, originally estimated to cost €562 million that ended up costing €984 million;

—the decision to buy a site for a new prison at a cost of almost €30 million which may not prove suitable for the purposes intended, when cheaper, more suitable alternative sites were available;

—the acquisition over a number of years of buildings to house asylum seekers which were never used and which remain empty;

—a whole range of other projects initiated by this Government involving either a total waste of money or massive over-runs, including Abbotstown, the Punchestown Equestrian Centre, e-voting, the failure to properly cost the extension of medical cards to the over 70s, and the indemnity deal agreed with the religious orders outside normal Cabinet procedures;

conscious that this wasteful use of money has meant that there are less funds available for vital infrastructure, such as public transport and for a wide range of essential public services such as health, education, welfare, carers, home-help, the disability sector and many others;

condemns the mismanagement and lack of public accountability exercised by this Government and its failure to ensure that taxpayers got value for their money;

calls on the Government to implement in full the recommendations of the NESC Study 'Achieving Quality Outcomes: The Management of Public Expenditure'; and

calls on the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, following consultation with the Working Group of Committee Chairmen and the Committee of Public Accounts, to bring forward concrete proposals for the establishment of an Office of Management and Budget, to be attached to Dáil Éireann and to assist this House in the assessment of proposals for major public expenditure and in the oversight and scrutiny of the management and delivery of those projects.

This motion deals with the Government's gross waste of taxpayers' money through cost overruns and failed projects. Everyone here can draw up a long catalogue of Government waste. I am sure we will hear from some of the Deputies opposite about cost overruns when we held office. That is fair enough but the point of our motion——

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