Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

As I said during the debate on Second Stage, I do not have a problem with the Department being split. There is a good deal of merit in having a Minister with responsibility for public service reform at Cabinet level. I do not believe there is a person in this Dáil who does not believe that public service reform is required. That is understood and endorsed by people in the civil and public service. The people working in those services all know that they require reform but that should not be taken as a code for cuts. Such reform is about having a vision and rebuilding towards having a better public service in which people will be proud to work and from which citizens will consider they are getting a very good service.

The fact this debate is occurring tells us there are flaws. We would not be having this debate if matters were straightforward. It was disingenuous of the Tánaiste, for whom I have a good deal of time and have known for many years, to say we were trying to restrict the debate on the Bill and delay its implementation. It is our job on this side of the House, on which the Minister was for long enough, to hold the Government to account and to tease matters out. When there is not a gap between Committee and Report Stages, there is a major flaw and if there is a major flaw in the process, there is often a major flaw in the outcome. I believe the Minister would make that point if he was on this side.

The members of the Technical Group only learned this morning that there was a briefing yesterday for Opposition spokespersons. I fully understand that the Technical Group is not a nice neat package where there are spokespersons and where it is easy to do that. We did not decide to put ourselves in here, it was the citizens who decided that. The Technical Group forms almost 31% of the Opposition and I do not believe we should be excluded. I acknowledge that we have to do our part in making it easy for briefings to be made to one nominated person and we are very happy to do that, but the point I am making must be taken on board.

The Minister or anyone who visits the Gallery would say this is a very different Dáil. The sheer size of the Government puts an extra obligation on it to make sure the process is right and to engage with people, even if it means we have to do things differently. Given that we are such a big group, things must be done differently.

I had a discussion at the Whips meeting yesterday and I was told off because I was told they were sick of me and sick of the Technical Group. They will have to get used to being sick of us because we are not going to go away. We are here for the duration of this Dáil.

In terms of the decision of the citizens to shape the Dáil in the way they did, I was a party in a constitutional case in terms of the equality of membership. Therefore, I am very familiar with case law on equality. Equality must extend to how we do business in reshaping things in a very changed environment.

I wish to deal with some of the issues that are the subject of this debate. With regard to the Revenue Commissioners, I understand there requires to be scrutiny and supervision in regard to the number of staff. We all remember that there were two tax amnesties because there were deficiencies in the Revenue Commissioners over the years. I have serious concerns that while great pressure will be exerted to have supervision of the social welfare system, we will have inadequate supervision of the Revenue Commissioners, having regard to the embargo and the number of people there to make sure that people pay their taxes. If people do not pay their taxes, we will end up in the same situation that occurred in the past. One need only look around to know that the black economy is starting to function. It is obvious to anyone who cares to look. People with small businesses have pointed out to me that they believe that it is from the black economy that they are suffering unfair competition. In the Revenue Commissioners' supervisory role, particular attention must be paid to ensure there are sufficient people to do that job because it is extremely important.

I am no fan of NAMA. The setting up of it was one of the greatest mistakes that was ever made. I agree with Deputy Sean Fleming that it should be returned to the Department. We have for too many years seen an outsourcing of responsibility. That was a particular pattern of politics that did not serve this country well. All the quangos are a case in point and I do not need to dwell on that. A person told me that a piece of land was acquired by NAMA and the person who owned it returned to buy an adjacent field and when the person selling the field said he had heard that the person's assets had been acquired by NAMA and was surprised he had the money to purchase the field, he replied he had bought it back for a tiny fraction of what he originally paid for it.

I am checking to see whether this allegation is true, but it is not the first one. The lack of transparency one remove from such allegations is a serious issue that will come back to bite us.

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