Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

To answer the Deputy's question in regard of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, to which he referred, and what I had to say about it yesterday, I made the point that the constitutional responsibility of every Comptroller and Auditor General under any Government is to point out where he feels there has been less than effective value for money or disposal of funds. It is in the context between raising revenue of €50 billion and expending over €50 billion, the total expenditure and tax raising powers of the Government is almost €100 billion. Any €1 million or €100,000 spent unwisely or not to best effect is obviously €1 million or €100,000 too much but the context in which we are discussing this is that level of expenditure and of tax raised.

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