Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

These questions arose from the controversy that developed following revelations about FÁS involving trips to Florida and the expenses incurred, about who travelled and who paid for what. It emerged that the statutory responsibility for approving the scheme of expenses rested with the Minister. Without going back over the detail about who travelled where, we need to first establish a few principles. It is not a good idea that a Minister, who has a statutory responsibility to approve a scheme of expenses, should himself be the beneficiary of an expenses regime in the State agency concerned. There needs to be some kind of wall developed between the Minister who approves the regime, and the agency to whom the regime applied. Where a Minister is invited on a mission of some kind by a State agency, the expenditure incurred by the Minister and his or her staff should be accounted for in the Department's own budget, and should be subject to Dáil questions and the normal parliamentary scrutiny and accountability that applies to that. If that were done, there would be a distinction between the expenditure of the State agency and the extent to which Ministers benefit. The important thing is to make that distinction between the accountability by the State agency and the Minister.

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