Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I thank my colleague, Deputy Hogan for tabling this motion. The way Members vote on it tomorrow will be a litmus test of the sincerity of Members on all sides who have rushed at every available media opportunity to talk about the need for Dáil reform. We do not have 20 Ministers of State because the country needs them. They are a tribute to the inventiveness of the former Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, in ensuring that as many members of his parliamentary party as possible received positions. It was not a case of creating positions that were needed or performing necessary functions.

While 20 is the maximum number of Ministers of State that any Government could appoint, we do not need 20. Twelve is a reasonable number to meet all the requirements to ensure that Government runs properly, but we could manage with fewer than 12. I do not want any of the Ministers of State to take my comments personally because I am sure they are all decent people. It is not their fault they have been given their titles, although I am not aware of any who refused them. The calls for Dáil reform by the Minister, Deputy Gormley, and Senator Boyle, who can never see a microphone without speaking into it, are nauseating. Deputy Gogarty has subjected us to streams of consciousness on issues of Dáil reform and junior Ministers.

We have the Minister of State, Deputy Trevor Sargent, who has responsibility for food and horticulture. I cannot figure out what it is he does that is in any way different to the responsibilities exercised by the senior Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Deputy Brendan Smith. The Minister of State, Deputy Sargent, appears to be essentially the Minister for wild mushrooms. It seems that his primary function is to pop up every so often in the media, surrounded by vegetables. I do not refer to the type of vegetables we saw at the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis surrounding Mr. David Davin Power but to vegetables of the edible variety. The Minister of State runs a website on which one can get happy hints on how to do one's gardening. I do not believe it requires €150,000 a year, paid by taxpayers, in addition to a number of departmental advisers, for any Member of the House to achieve this. I am reluctant, on occasion, to slap myself on the back but I am a fair and reasonable gardener myself and I do not believe I should get an extra €50, 000 a year from the taxpayers of Ireland to be able to speak eloquently about my geraniums or the benefits of planting my own lettuces. Yet, it seems to me that is essentially this Minister of State's function.

There are people in this House who have mysterious roles. The Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, has special responsibility for road safety. For the life of me, I have not been able to figure out what he does that is different to what Gay Byrne does. The Road Safety Authority of Ireland, as I understand it, is a separate body and the Minister of State cannot even answer questions in this House in its respect. If that junior ministry were to be abolished overnight we would not see people gathered in protest in their thousands outside Leinster House in order to save the Minister of State's position.

We then have Deputy Seán Power, who is Minister of State at the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. His special responsibility, God help us, is the information society, as Deputy Hogan already mentioned. If this means doing something to ensure that everybody in the country can have access to broadband, it is quite clear that the Minister of State has failed utterly in his function. I constantly hear the senior Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Eamon Ryan, talking about broadband. Is it necessary for him to have a mini-me junior Minister who can mouth the same inanities when the Government has failed utterly to deliver on policy in this area?

Then there is the Minister of State, Deputy Mary Wallace, whose responsibility is health promotion and food safety. I am not quite sure whether because the Minister of State, Deputy Sargent, has responsibility for food and horticulture, and the Minister of State, Deputy Wallace, has responsibility for food safety, we are to understand there is a difference in what Deputy Sargent does with regard to food and what Deputy Wallace does. Is it that Deputy Sargent is responsible for food that is slightly dangerous and just a little iffy, whereas Deputy Wallace is responsible for food that is supposed to be safe? In the context of health protection and the cervical cancer immunisation programme, I am not aware that Deputy Mary Wallace was consulted on the cancellation of that programme, or of what input she has made to it. I do not see what added value she lends to that position.

We have Deputy Michael Kitt, who is Minister of State with special responsibility for local services. He is attached to the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government along with Deputy Michael Finneran, who has responsibility for housing, urban renewal and developing areas. Does either of them know the difference in their individual functions? Does anyone outside this House know? Can anyone actually define what it is either gentleman does that is different from what the other does? What requires us to have two Ministers of State with practically identical functions but different names? A former Taoiseach was inventive and the current Taoiseach has maintained that area of responsibility.

We then have the ultimate Minister of State, Deputy Máire Hoctor, whose grasp of her brief was rather eloquently displayed to the nation in a recent edition of "Prime Time". She has responsibilities for older people. God help us, she is the Minister of State who did not know that the medical card was being taken as a right from the over 70s. What does she do for older people other than issuing a newsletter exhorting them to live a long life? What is she doing? In what way do any of these Ministers of State function in a manner that matters to the public or increases the greater good of society?

The truth is that everybody in this House, including all those on the Government benches, knows that these ministerial appointments are nothing other than political sinecures designed to keep a reasonable number of members of the Government parties happy that they have a title and a so-called status. At this stage, when this country faces enormous economic difficulties, nobody can say that abolishing junior ministerial positions will solve our economic problems. However, at least it would be symbolic and would show that we are getting our act together structurally in this House and that the Government acknowledges the need to tackle areas of waste in the use of taxpayers' money.

It is hugely depressing that the response to this motion from the Government side is not to accept the motion but to declare that the volume of Government business has grown. This statement is worth quoting in its superficiality:

The Cabinet has established a Committee to draw up a comprehensive programme of reforms to ensure that the Dáil carries out the business of Parliament within an efficient and modern framework, and recognises the need to ensure the best return to the Exchequer.

There would be a better return to the Exchequer if we got rid of the number of junior Ministers and their accompanying advisers. That would be an instant saving of approximately €8 million per year that might be better spent on other areas.

The truth, of course, is that our parliamentary system and our democratic system are essentially broken. The truth is that none of the parties in Government, neither the Green Party, nor the remnants of the Progressive Democrats nor the Fianna Fáil Party, have any real interest in Dáil reform.

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