Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Is the Attorney General or Director of Public Prosecutions a Minister for the purposes of this provision?

We are asked to believe that next week, following the passage of this Bill, the lawyers employed by the DPP in respect of prosecutions and the lawyers in the Attorney General's Office who brief counsel, will be subject to an 8% reduction in fees. This matter needs to be clarified by Deputy Lenihan who is, after all, the Minister for Finance. The Minister for Health and Children and the Attorney General attend Cabinet. Has the Minister spoken to them and told them the slogan is "minus 8%?". This provision will result in a lot more regulation and an enormous amount of additional power for various bodies. However, this power will not necessarily manifest itself in lower fees and costs for the public or firms and businesses using these professional services.

The irony is that this Government and the Minister for Health and Children have been driving the situation whereby hospital consultants and private hospitals are charging astronomical fees for most procedures carried out in the new private hospitals. However, this is not necessarily a problem as the National Treatment Purchase Fund is obliged to spend 90% of our scarce money commissioning procedures in private hospitals.

The poor old taxpayer is on a hiding to nothing as regards the Minister for Health and Children. Connolly Hospital, which is located in the constituency the Minister and I represent, does not have a strong tradition in respect of private medicine, as is the case in respect of most rural hospitals. For example, a person who is unable to have a procedure carried out by a consultant, can, under the National Treatment Purchase Fund, have that procedure carried out at another location and the NTPF will pay for it. This is part of a circle of crazy logic.

The object of the amendments put forward by the Labour Party is to provide for negotiating rights by the various professionals on behalf of their trade union members, to require the Minister to make available the statutory instruments in this regard and to require an extension of the consultation period beyond the 30 days provided. These are eminently reasonable amendments which seek to provide for a more negotiated position in respect of the extraordinary powers conferred on the Minister in sections 9 and 10.

I do not know exactly when PricewaterhouseCoopers was commissioned by the Minister to work on matters relating to Anglo Irish Bank. We were told in various discussions that seven or eight drafts of the report had been compiled. It would appear PricewaterhouseCoopers was commissioned during the summer or in September. Does the Minister have an estimate of costs in respect of the seven reports drafted by PricewaterhouseCoopers? It is a firm with which I am familiar having worked and undertaken my accountancy training there. I am interested to know if the Minister has a ballpark figure in respect of the cost of the drafting of these reports. Also, as and from tomorrow, will all of those people, who may still be working on reports for the Minister's Department, receive a note stating their fees will be subject to a reduction of 8%? This is the net point.

The Minister confidently stated earlier that computer systems in the various public bodies were ready to go in respect of the deduction of pension levies for public sector workers. Is there in the Department of Finance a programme which will subject staff from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Merrill Lynch, another consultancy group employed by the Minister, to an 8% reduction in fees following enactment of this Bill? That is what this is about.

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