Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

The Minister mentioned the issue of data on expenditure on local authority pay. It is astonishing that the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government does not have that information. It is mind boggling particularly given that the Government has correctly placed such an emphasis on scrutinising expenditure. However, the Government cannot do that if there are big gaps in the information provided to it. Given that the Minister has been in his new Department for more than a year, I would have thought he would have insisted that the Department for the Environment, Community and Local Government would have access to that information and more to the point that he would have it. How can we have any rational debate on these matters when much of the time, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is working on guess work?

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