Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The Minister for Foreign Affairs was very anxious that the Pope would answer queries from the Department about the Murphy report on child abuse. He was not so anxious to respond when almost €1 billion was illegally taken from elderly people in nursing homes. He said it was not his responsibility. Over the years there has been a raft of consultancy reports which have never been acted on.

Turning to a slightly different question, I notice Deputy Ring has focused on €125,000 being spent on a report to count the number of frogs in the country on the eve of a frightening budget. Was this matter discussed at Cabinet or did the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government hop it on the Cabinet table and nobody saw it? How is it proposed that this consultancy report will get into every wetland field in the country to count the number of frogs? The Minister, Deputy Gormley, has said it will take two years to complete this.

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