Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)

The Government parties will survive for as long as they can. Politically, they must hang together or else they will hang separately. Today's reshuffle is about politics, not the reconfiguration of Departments or the nonsense we heard from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Micheál Martin, on innovation and research. Those constitute parts of existing Departments and it is for those budgets to perform.

I wish to discuss the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. He is a clever politician if he was able to extract another Minister of State from the Taoiseach. There were 20 Ministers of State at the time of the former Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, and there are 15 now. The Minister had a willing horse in the present Taoiseach, who wants to ensure that the Government will survive for as long as possible by tying in the Green Party. However, the Taoiseach did not need to do so because the Green Party is well tied into the Government. That party is prepared to take any punishment it is given on banking, employment, health policy or so on.

The Minister talks a lot about various matters and makes many public statements, but he does not walk the walk. Where is he concerning the accountability required in the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, DDDA? He does not want to investigate its corporate governance issues and decisions made by boards of directors and others that have exposed the taxpayer to a significant degree. We have heard nothing from him in this respect. He is bogged down in a legal quagmire with the Attorney General's office or other legal people. We will wait the shortest possible time to determine whether he is walking the walk or just talking the talk in respect of this issue. Has he made any decisions since becoming a Minister that will expose the taxpayer further, given how previous decisions exposed the taxpayer significantly?

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