Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I wish to reflect on the number of appointments to be made and the context in which the committee system is structured. The Constitution provides for 15 Members of Government. We have 20 Ministers of State which is an extraordinary number. If we ever have a pub quiz in Dáil Éireann the tie-breaker for members of the Government should be to name the Ministers of State and for the absolute clincher to also state what they are supposed to do. Not even members of the Government who work with them know what they do apart from seven or eight important jobs.

The Government proposes to increase the number of committees by three. The list of 21 committees we will have does not include the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission. We will have an extraordinary structure whereby each of the 21 committees will have at least three remunerated appointments. In some cases the number is more but for the most part it is three. The chairman, vice-chairman and convenor of each committee receive a stipend, and the total cost is approximately €30,000 per committee.

In addition we will have to find staff for the extra committees. Unlike the HSE, an embargo probably does not apply to the Houses of the Oireachtas. From my experience of being a member of the Committee of Public Accounts and the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance and the Public Service, which are both serviced by excellent staff, I believe most committees have approximately two staff and various people are allocated to translate and transcribe records from time to time and for the hours the committee operates.

The new committee structure will mean 63 paid posts, the lion's share of which will go to the Government with a smaller share going to Fine Gael and a tiny share going to the Labour Party. This is called a "payroll vote" and one wonders what it is for. Is it to make the Government Deputies who receive the stipends work harder? I work with people in Government all the time on committees and I know how hard many of them work. This is not about them. It is about the designs of the Government, the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance.

Several weeks ago when the motion of confidence in the Taoiseach was put to the House I found the reply of the Minister for Finance, Deputy Cowen, interesting. While the power was draining away from the Taoiseach, when Deputy Cowen spoke to the thrill of the Fianna Fáil backbenches one could feel in the atmosphere that this was their man speaking and the paradigm of power had shifted. He stated he valued loyalty above all else and fair dues. Is the loyalty in this "payroll vote" to be purchased at the taxpayers' expense? Many Fianna Fáil people of great talent have been overlooked in recent years. Committee appointments are a way of rewarding and keeping people quiescent and if they are made chairmen they may live to fight another day. It is hard on people who put a great deal of effort into the Dáil not to get preferment when their party is in power. All of us are aware of this difficulty.

According to the Ombudsman's report, in recent years approximately 450 quangos have been created. These bodies, such as the HSE, barely report to the Dáil. I do not know where they are in the reforms suggested by the Chief Whip. People from the HSE are not accountable, least of all to the people in the Dáil or in committee and this is the worst of all.

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