Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

We are being asked today to approve three new Ministers of State, which will cost €4 million each over the lifetime of the Government. That €12 million could buy 700,000 home help hours for the people the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, has mentioned. It could provide 23,000 extra families with medical cards and could make a real difference to people's lives. However, we are being asked to forfeit all those opportunities and, instead, vote for these extra Ministers of State without any business case being presented as to why we should have them, any performance tests setting out what they are to achieve or any indication of the value for money to be derived from the new posts.

No other business in the country would decide to spend €12 million of its own money, let alone taxpayers' money, without some firm indication that the money would yield something of value to the people paying for it. The thought process behind the three new Ministers of State is the very same as that which saw us pay out €1.3 billion in benchmarking awards and receive virtually nothing in return. It is soft option politics based on the notion that when we need to, we can dip into taxpayers' pockets and take some more from them because it is convenient. That is not the type of politics that will meet the challenges we will face in the coming five years.

We know the era of soft money is at an end, as the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance has spent the past two hours telling the House while we debated other issues. Within minutes of the Minister telling the House how frugal we must be with taxpayers' money and, accordingly, not offering any concessions in the area of stamp duty, a Minister of State in the same Department comes into the House and, without offering any significant business case, tells Members we must shell out money for three new Ministers of State.

I have no objection to the lucky €4 million-men this legislation will create. I am sure many are of estimable character. In reality, we are being asked to allocate money which is scarce for other purposes. A justifiable case needs to be made but the Minister of State opposite has not done so.

The reason we have this type of politics goes back to the attitude the Taoiseach has taken. He refuses to set standards, either for himself or his Ministers, and that is a core issue. Politics must command respect because it sets standards for those who assume high office. I do not pretend to believe standards of personal propriety have not been damaged by this Taoiseach. I abhor the notion that it should be acceptable that a Minister for Finance would allow a "dig out" to be organised on his behalf when speaking in his capacity as a sovereign minister of a government. That is wrong. The Bill to outlaw that practice has not yet surfaced. I hope it will be returned to the Order Paper quickly. It was not passed, despite the promise that it would be passed in the last Oireachtas.

This same "dig out" culture is still very evident. Only last week we saw it clearly in the appointment of people to chair and manage important State bodies. This is not the sort of culture we want. We cannot afford to appoint people on the basis of their past loyalty when deciding who occupies important positions in State bodies. I am not naive enough to think that people who have a Fianna Fáil background should not be appointed to these bodies, but I do not accept that persons who bring no proven skills or aptitude to the task they are undertaking should be appointed because they support Fianna Fáil. That is unacceptable, but that standard continues to prevail and we have seen it since the election.

The issue of standards goes much deeper. It is about performance and setting important standards of performance for Ministers and Ministers of State. We are being asked to approve three more Ministers of State without any standards of performance being applied to the existing Ministers. We need to ensure that public procedures are applied to protect the tax payer, but that is not happening. We need to see standards on delivering pledges made solemnly to the public, but that is not happening. What about the solemn pledges made on class sizes? What about the solemn pledges on the number of people on hospital waiting lists? What about the pledges on the number of social and affordable houses that would be delivered? All of these promises were breached and no Minister took any responsibility for them. What about the failure of evaluation procedures — designed by the Department of Finance — to protect the tax payer when decisions are being made? The Department of the Taoiseach tore up those procedures when trying to develop Stadium Ireland. Those procedures were also torn up with the failure of e-voting, MediaLab Europe, the Punchestown equestrian centre and so on. These projects were prominently promoted by Ministers who destroyed the evaluation procedures that were there to protect the tax payer. There was no consequence when these projects failed and cost the tax payer millions of euros. The Ministers who were involved were either promoted or left in their position.

These are the issues at stake when we see new people being given the nod. We have seen the virtual collapse of major public policies, but no Minister has suffered the consequences. At the end of the period when decentralisation was to be completed, less than 10% of it was implemented. Ministers hide their personal responsibility for this behind an implementation group which has been given an impossible task, because its political masters have not thought out the implications of what is to be done about it. The climate change strategy was published in 2000. By 2007, it had not achieved one whit of what it had set as a target, yet no Minister took responsibility.

When we expect the tax payer to pony up to fund Ministers and new Ministers of State, we must see Ministers take responsibility. Even a Minister who would not read his brief — and it cost the tax payer millions of euro — has not been sanctioned and he continues to operate within the Cabinet. No tests of performance are being offered today for these Ministers of State. If a system exists where performance is not at the core of promotion and of holding posts, then the capacity of an organisation to deliver is dumbed down. Efficiency is undermined, as is the value of high performance. That is what has happened. Posts are being filled on the basis of loyalty and endurance, rather than on the basis of merit and performance. That is not acceptable. This Bill is designed to quell unrest among Fianna Fáil backbenchers who rightly see a congested and unfair system of promotion, where an existing plutocracy bars the way for new talent within that party.

I take with a grain of salt this argument about greater complexity and the need to manage new volumes of business. New challenges always arise. That is the nature of politics. One will always face new challenges, just as there is always a case for new programmes. What we have learned the hard way in the past is that if there are new priorities, other matters must take the back seat. When one decides on priorities one makes something a posteriority — something that has lower value. That is what Governments must do. That is what Taoisigh must do. They must set priorities, decide what is important. When the new demand arises one finds space elsewhere to accommodate it, but that is not the way this is being approached.

I do not dispute that there are new tasks to be addressed. I do not deny that there is a strong case for an innovation strategy, for example, but is there still a case for having separate departments for fisheries, for forestry and for horticulture, and a senior Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food? I doubt there is still a case for having a separate Minister for food and for food safety? I doubt there is a case for having a separate Minister for integration and for equality?

We need a proper debate if we are to give this the nod, but such a debate will not occur. The Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, has come in with no such brief. There is no policy agenda to be pursued under these headings. There are no performance tests by which we might be able to judge in a year's time or two years' time whether these new Ministers of State were justified. That is not an acceptable way to play free and loose with taxpayers' money, and it is part of a culture that must change. I am disappointed that the Department of Finance, of all Departments, comes in here to rubber-stamp this sort of shoddy approach to public business.

The truth is it was not a concern about new areas that led to this allocation. If we were discussing meeting the challenge of innovation, we would look on the Fianna Fáil benches for someone who had skill and aptitude to address a task like this. While I know many members in Fianna Fáil, I would have said Deputy Sean Ardagh is an ideal person to occupy that position. He is a professional accountant. His family has been involved in innovation within business. He has a perfect identikit to bring value to this post. I have no objection to the person who has been given the post, but genuinely looking around on the backbenches for persons who would bring skill is not the test and we do not see such a test being applied in the way these positions are being doled out. That is what is deeply disturbing about what is happening here. Jobs are being chucked out because it is politically expedient to do so and that is not a fair or correct reason for doing it.

It has been said that the successful politician is one who will promise a bridge, even where there is no river. I suppose the Taoiseach is building three such bridges today. People will take off stating that he is the cute operator, and he probably is. He is probably correct in making the calculation that by the time the people come to vote again they will have forgotten about this cavalier attitude.

They also will have forgotten about the cavalier attitude that agreements which they negotiate with Independent Deputies to support the Government should not be revealed, which is also a clear breach of any decent standard of accountability. The voters will have forgotten, where a particular Deputy was in the courts contesting a law and had a deal to negotiate with RTE about the money she owed, that the Taoiseach had come out in the midst of those sensitive negotiations stating that this was a Deputy who ought to be in Government. If that is not interfering with the independence and due process of matters that are being dealt with elsewhere, I do not know what is.

These are cavalier abuses of the high trust that people have in this Government and they should not happen. They should not happen at the beginning of Government because the Government is confident that people will have forgotten about them by the time it is all over. If we ourselves do not have standards, and believe that we must apply and honour high standards, people will take us for what they see. By this decision and by many of the decisions that have been taken in the past two weeks, we are undermining the trust we want to see people have in their politicians. It is time to get away from soft option politics. If the Minister of State were genuine, he would say that new Ministers of State were needed and he would provide strategy approaches and performance tests to judge them. That would be great but this Taoiseach does not have the authority to do so because he has allowed shoddy standards to apply in the past without sanction. That has undermined the important accountability of Ministers to Government and of Government to this House.

I will not ask the taxpayers to stump up €4 million for each of these three Ministers of State. I do not see the case for it and I do not accept it.

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