Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The presentation of this Supplementary Estimate summarises all that is most difficult and in default with regard to the Government's management of public finances. It expresses as well the difficulties that lie within the McCarthy report. Each Department seems to have produced a wish list, while the expenditure section of the Department of Finance also had one, and the two wish lists were edited together into the McCarthy report.

When the Taoiseach, Deputy Brian Cowen, was Minister for Finance he delivered with a great fanfare what he described as a reform of the budgetary process. He did away with prior Estimates and instead, brought in a reformed process, where Estimates were introduced on the same day as the budget. That has resulted in an enormous reduction in the amount of information provided about Government spending plans on a departmental level, not just to the detriment of the Opposition, but also I suspect, to the Government itself. Formerly, the Estimates process had to be reviewed and completed a month or six weeks before the budget. The purpose of the reform, on paper, was very valuable because it was meant to be supplemented by activities in committee, where the type of detailed discussion regarding the Vote, outlined by Deputy Charles Flanagan, would have taken place well in advance of the budget and the Estimates then being published on budget day, because the committee would have discussed the matter in hand. Instead, the position now is that the information only becomes available when we are almost at the year end or on budget day.

The Minister for Finance says the €4 million will be found by other reductions in the Taoiseach's Vote. We do not even know what the other reductions are. Are they as a result of waste, because in many ways the McCarthy report is a testament to waste, since it issues lists of so many areas where money was spent, as much to gain political patronage as to do with the politics of the State? It goes without saying that the Vote of the DPP is fundamental to the rule and administration of law in this country. That is particularly true in the case of people who have suffered injury or been bereaved as a result of murder, manslaughter or vicious assault. If confidence is to be restored in the legal system among communities that find themselves under siege, there must be successful prosecution to bring murders and professional criminals speedily to justice. We share a constituency, so the Minister knows that the toll of murders over a number of years there, and in the constituency of the Minister for Defence, Deputy O'Dea, has been frightening. Many of those murders have gone unprosecuted and unpunished and the families made bereft of fathers and sons, for the most part, who have been murdered or killed, are waiting, in many cases, for justice to be done and to be seen to be done, with the wrongdoers deservedly being sent to prison for long periods of time. Having a functional DPP office which prosecutes on a timely basis and gets convictions is crucial.

One hardly ever wakes up these days without RTE reporting from some part of the country about somebody being murdered, killed or the subject of manslaughter. There was another such case in my constituency within the past ten days where a young man seems to have been beaten to death while at a disco. The impression and feeling of lawlessness that this Government has allowed is now strongly implanted in society.

With regard to professional criminals, I do not know whether anything has been done which seriously provides for the recovery of moneys from those who have acquired substantial assets, to cover their defence costs. Usually the cost of the defence of professional criminals is met through the legal aid system. Will the Minister say whether the 8% reduction in fees has been fully carried through, in terms of the services provided by barristers, solicitors and others, for legal services supplied to the State? It is important for public servants who are taking such a significant hit in terms of the pension levy as well as the other levies and taxes, that the sheltered private sector in Ireland, particularly where it gets much of its business from the State, is seen to be taking a commensurate hit.

I frequently pass the new Taj Mahal of the Courts Service, the new court buildings at the bottom of Parkgate Street, near the Phoenix Park. It is a huge complex. It is gigantic. There is a cost which was undertaken through a PPP mechanism when the Celtic tiger was at its height. Have the fees to be paid for that court arrangement been subject to any renegotiation? I am sure that court will be magnificent. The Phoenix Park has a very large memorial to the Duke of Wellington which has dominated the Dublin skyline for centuries. However, while it may not be as tall, the new courts complex is significantly bigger than the Wellington monument and now dominates the entrance to the park.

Some €42 million has been paid to date on the proposed prison at Thornton Hall, including the latest few tens of thousand of euro to be spent on additional landscape work around the prison. We are now living at a time when many families have lost employment. Families are living in very reduced circumstances, but we are still living with the legacy of Charlie McCreevy and a party on attitude, when nothing was too good or costly for the group of Ministers across the benches. Is the Minister aware of what the Taoiseach will cut from his Vote? Will it be superfluous items that just went with the glory years or will it cut into services that may be required?

The current DPP has done a considerable amount to improve the status and standing of the office. The efforts made by the DPP to increase the level of communication from his office particularly in the distressing circumstances of the avalanche of murders that regularly occur has been extremely important to the families of the victims. The various measures to improve information on court procedures given to the families of victims when they go to court are all welcome. From speaking to families in my constituency who have had to go to court to sit and listen to a case regarding their loved one who was murdered, it is clear that the improvement in communication has been extremely important. I commend the DPP and urge him to continue that process.

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