Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)

I agree with Deputy Stanley that it is appropriate to take all of these amendments together because, essentially, they deal with the same issue. The legislation proposes specifically to dissolve the Dormant Accounts Board and transfer the statutory functions of the board to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government. The Bill is being put through the House to give effect to these decisions by the Government. If I understand it correctly, the thinking behind the amendment to section 3 of the Bill is to continue the Dormant Accounts Board - Deputy Stanley has just made that case - as well as to give additional roles and functions to the board in respect of future disbursement plans. I am advised these are roles and functions that the board does not have under existing dormant account legislation so, in effect, the Deputy wants to give further functions to the board. Sections 5 to 14 provide specifically for the dissolution of the board and the transfer of its functions to the Department and includes sections on what one might call housekeeping matters, such as the transfer of property rights, liabilities, legal proceedings and the preservation of contracts, records and so on. They also include provision to continue with current schemes and programmes pending the completion of new disbursement schemes and action plans under the legislation. In the circumstances, I do not see any reason to accept the amendments.

I point out that this was recommended in the McCarthy report and I believe everybody in the House agrees that we need to reduce the number of such organisations. The Bill provides specifically for the Government and, in particular, the Oireachtas to have more oversight than they currently have in regard to the fund.

On the Deputy's last point that there is a significant amount of money in the fund, the way in which the money must be accounted for is up-front in the departmental Vote - in other words, it has to be found within the departmental Vote initially. In the current economic situation, it is unlikely that significant amounts of money will be spent out of this fund. As the Deputy said, this money belongs to other people; it does not belong to the State. For all of these reasons, maintaining a board does not in our view appear to be a good thing in so far as it is obviously a cost to the State. I do not propose to accept the amendments.

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