Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

-----is facing the same because they do not have a full-rank Minister at the Cabinet table with sole responsibility for the Department of Defence. This is coming home to roost now. I want to talk about the Minister with responsibility for this area. He was in the House last week talking about Garda stations. He said that Garda buildings did not matter. He is embarking on a programme to close Garda stations; he has commenced a process to close Army barracks and he has already closed several courthouses around the country in his few months in office. For example, during the summer recess he announced through a sly press release that the courthouse in Portarlington in my constituency was to close. He is closing courthouses, Garda stations and Army barracks, and he will close more. The Defence Forces better watch out.

As has been well rehearsed, we all know there is no economic sense in this. There are no savings on staff - there are additional staff costs because they need to be relocated. There is maintenance of the old buildings which cannot be sold in theses economic times. If property was sold during the good economic times, we might have got value for the taxpayer, but the taxpayer will get no value from selling any of these properties. They will need to be protected from vandalism and some of the new barracks into which people will move will need to be upgraded. To facilitate the new staff coming in and for health and safety reasons they will need to be brought up to a higher standard. While there are no barracks in my constituency I am very proud of and happy with the work the Army do on the security of Portlaoise prison.

The Government is hiding behind the EU and IMF on this matter. There is nothing in that deal about closing Army barracks as everybody on the Government side knows. The Government has used the EU and IMF deal for every harsh decision it has had to make. However, it was able to make several decisions that were not contained in that EU and IMF deal.

It brought in a pension levy and robbed the pensioners of their money. It introduced an insurance levy last week to bail out Quinn Insurance. That was not in the IMF deal. Ministers claimed they would cut the airport travel tax, yet that was not in the IMF deal. They closed Roscommon hospital and that was not in the IMF deal.

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