Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

-----and carry through projects once they enter the system. With that €360 million, the Government could have built a major portion of the national children's hospital on a greenfield site or 100 schools. It could have dealt with many of the country's infrastructural requirements.

Last week, I visited Neilstown where I met the mother of a young child who can read 15 words, but whose teacher will be removed in September. The Government says that it is trying to rectify the public finances and eliminate the national debt, but what has occurred under the Taoiseach's stewardship as the Minister for Finance and the Government's leader is a complete inability to deliver projects on time and within cost. I have given the most famous examples.

It may be the case that there could be another five Ministers for Justice, Equality and Law Reform before what the current Minister discussed this morning sees completion. Despite this, a man was arrested on Holy Thursday and kept in Mountjoy Prison over the weekend for not having a dog licence. The spectrum of incompetence and money wastage is incredible. It was appropriate for the Taoiseach to say that he wanted to get value for money, but he would not know what that was even were it to jump up and bite the Government in the face.

As a former Minister for Finance, does the Taoiseach accept that the money spent on e-voting machines, where returning officers were given no criteria for their storage, the PPARS system and the consultancy fees wasted on the Abbotstown development and the Thornton Hall proposal is dead money?

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