Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I am amazed that the Tánaiste is happily deluding himself that the Government is making progress on e-Government. I wonder has he read the Comptroller and Auditor General's report on e-Government. It shows that €420 million was spent and half of the delivery promised was achieved. It is a programme that shows little evidence of substantial savings from the application of information technology, and numerous initiatives started and then abandoned, including ones on housing grants, driving licences and passports.

One may ask the role of the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance in all of this. The Tánaiste was a member of the high level Cabinet committee that was supposed to be driving this. His Secretary General was on the high level committee of Secretaries General that was supposed to be driving this. Once again, the Tánaiste is high on rhetoric but when it comes to delivering results, he is just marked absent. I want the Tánaiste to address what his role was in the failure to deliver this programme and in the continuing failure to have any programme to replace it since it expired at the end of 2005.

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