Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I apologise for leaving earlier but our colleague, the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, was celebrating 45 years in the Dáil with colleagues from the Labour Party. He and his father have 66 years of unbroken service to this House between them, which is a record. I apologise to the Minister of State, Deputy Parlon, for missing his reply to the debate as a result.

The heart of the Comptroller and Auditor General's reports for each of the last four years during the life of this Government is a catalogue of waste, failure and things gone wrong. This will be the last report before the next general election. That is not to say that things do not go wrong in management structures or that people do not make plans that turn out to be more expensive or conditions change that make the item either more necessary or less relevant, but the difficulty here it is that when the Comptroller and Auditor General reports, there is nobody at Government level who is responsible. It becomes the responsibility of civil servants, although in a management context they are really the line managers carrying out the orders of the Government of the day. Unlike in many other jurisdictions, nobody in the Government ever seems to take responsibility — except for successes. No one ever takes responsibility for failure, for things that do not happen or for things that run over budget.

I listened to the Minister of State's colleague, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Cullen, speak last night on integrated ticketing. The poor Minister has been ten years or more in a State car and I am not sure he understands what public transport is like. He does not appear to appreciate that on the north-west side of Dublin there is no Luas. He was boasting about ticket integration between the Luas and some train users which was introduced by Connex but he did not seem to appreciate — perhaps because he is unfamiliar with the geography of the north-west side of Dublin — that we only have a train and some buses. The train is so overcrowded it is popularly known locally as "The Calcutta Express". We have a bus lane which, with other bus lanes in Dublin city, cost €100 million but it is only a cause of aggravation to motorists because, by and large, there are no buses in the bus lanes in the greater Dublin area.

Reference was also made to Thornton Hall. This project is driven by a narrow Progressive Democrats ideology which wants a super-prison on the outskirts of Dublin so that down the road, in the unlikely event that the Progressive Democrats Party is able to cling to power even after this week's events, it can be privatised. It really is difficult to read year after year this catalogue of waste and find that no one other than civil servants are ever held responsible. The only head that rolled in regard to the fiascoes in the Department of Health and Children was not that of the then Minister, the commissioner of nearly 200 consultancy reports, but the Secretary General of the Department, who was moved.

If there is to be a change — we are offering a change to the people at the next election — it will include a proper structure of accountability on the spending of the people's own tax money so that as far as possible there is value for money, accountability and, if and when things go wrong, the buck will stop at some point. In Government, the buck should stop with the Minister or the Taoiseach of the day as he or she is the person who is responsible.

The other important element in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report is the chapter on the Revenue Commissioners. Like the Department of Social and Family Affairs, the Revenue Commissioners have reformed over the past 15 years. They are unrecognisable as the Revenue Commissioners of 1990 when it was commonly claimed that there was no pot of gold in terms of tax avoidance and evasion. Time and again, we have proven that the Minister for Finance has been the beneficiary. This report shows that the single premium insurance inquiries have yielded €398 million to date and will conservatively yield another €100 million. When I raised this matter with the Minister two years ago, he said "oh fiddle dee dee, there is no money". How time has proven him wrong.

The construction industry boom has been accompanied by a level of tax evasion and avoidance in that industry while an ordinary taxpayer, such as a young person who is probably single, earning €32,000 at work in the greater Dublin area or counties Kildare or Meath who gets a bit of overtime pay or a bonus payment, must pay tax at 42%.

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