Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

——the extent of concern that exists about issues arising last week. I will instance from Deputy Johnny Brady's own constituency one of the many people who approached me yesterday in fury about one aspect of this matter, which is that it is not possible to find out what happened, why it happened and who is responsible. The Taoiseach entered the House and denied all responsibility. He said it was not an information technology system, that the allegations were incorrect and misleading and all they were doing was to try to add new ideas but that it went wrong. Nobody will admit what happened.

What does the Tánaiste know since she took over? How much of this debacle of €160 million was incurred on her watch and how much was the responsibility of her predecessor? Did the decision go to Government? Was the original decision made by Government? Who was in charge of the project? Who made the decision to continue with the expenditure? If the first phase started out at €8.8 million, why did nobody shout stop when it went to €18.8 million, €28.8 million, €38.8 million or €98 million? Who is responsible? Was this matter ever brought back to Government? If a decision was made to extend it from a payroll system to a human resource management system, who made that decision? Were the consultants, Deloitte & Touche, given an open-ended cheque? Is there a contract with the company? Has the Tánaiste seen the contract? What does the contract provide for? Was it open-ended in that the company could send in any kind of invoice it liked?

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