Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General has found that the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform was one of the worst offenders in terms of incompetence, mismanagement and failure to ensure that the taxpayer got value for money in 2004. The incompetence did not start in 2004. In 2001 the Department purchased Brock House in Donnybrook for €9.9 million and it still lies idle even though it was intended for asylum seekers. In my constituency the Department purchased Parnell West Hotel in 2001 and after two years it is lying idle and disused on health and safety grounds. It was not properly examined by the OPW in the first place. Only last week we saw how Thornton Hall, a farm in north County Dublin that should only have cost €5 million to €6 million had been purchased by the present Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform for €29.9 million. If we go back earlier than this I am sure we can find similar examples of extravagant wastage in the Department.

While the Minister presents himself as the terror of "bogus" asylum seekers the Comptroller and Auditor General found that of the 10,813 failed asylum seekers from 1999 to 2004 on whom deportation orders had been served, only 2,275 were actually deported. He found that it took an average of eight months for the Department to translate asylum seekers' applications into English. There was an average gap of one to three years between the final refusal of an asylum application and the issuing of the deportation order. The entire asylum system is a slow, expensive, wasteful shambles, which cost the taxpayer a whopping €129 million in 2004. Failed asylum seekers are playing ducks and drakes with the Minister and his Department. Behind the Minister's bluff and bluster on the issue is a track record of gross incompetence and harsh insensitivity. A few vulnerable non-nationals, mainly women and children, are targeted, rounded up and deported in a glare of publicity.

The position in respect of the Garda Síochána is equally ludicrous. A questionable agreement was approved by the Cabinet in 1997 for the use of masts on Garda stations by the Esat mobile telephone company, now known as O2. It took the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform five years to finalise the licence fee, by which time Esat owed the Garda €3.6 million in arrears. Although these were belatedly paid, not a cent in lost interest was recouped. Amazingly, the 1,000 mobile telephones provided by Esat as part of the agreement became the only secure communications network the Garda possessed between 1997 and now.

In the absence of a secure Garda communications network, the GSM network supplied by Esat to less than 10% of gardaí as an incidental part of the telecommunications mast contract remains the only secure Garda communications system. Every criminal in Ireland can listen into the outdated analogue radio system which must be used by 11,000 of the 12,000 members of the Garda force. It is no wonder the robbers are a step ahead of the cops.

The Minister is guilty of the gravest dereliction of duty by not having the proposed digital Tetra communications network up and running and available to the Garda. In the fight against crime, particularly gangland crime, technology is essential but the Minister makes the Garda look like Keystone Cops by failing to equip them properly. Incidentally, the 1,000 gardaí who have O2 mobile telephones have all premium lines, that is, chat lines, blocked, no doubt to protect their faith and morals. Moreover, the Garda must operate its dubious PULSE computer system which is only available in one quarter of Garda stations. This results in rural-based gardaí having to travel 20 to 30 miles to input material into a system which is incredibly slow and cumbersome.

The Prison Service has not covered itself in glory either. The attempt by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, beginning in 2002, to introduce a modern information technology-based human resource management system, HRMS, for the Prison Service ended in disaster in December 2004 when it was discontinued and the old system reinstated at a cost of €450,000. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Accounting Officer for the Department assured him that his Department "had learned a very considerable lesson from its experiences with HRMS". The Comptroller and Auditor General concluded that "any further IT projects on a cross-agency basis, will need to be critically examined — irrespective of the demands or where they are coming from — to ensure that they can meet the requirements of the different entities involved." In other words, the job was botched and while a costly lesson had been learned, nobody was for the high jump.

The Comptroller and Auditor General has informed me that the purchase of Thornton Hall will be the recipient of his attention in next year's annual audit. I have no doubt that his 2005 report will put this year's findings in the shade.

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