Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My contribution is relevant to a Bill about transparency and the impact of decisions.

While we welcome the spirit of the Bill, this should be done as a matter of course. There should be an online calculator on the website. It is strange this issue is before us but I welcome the Bill and will support it. There is, however, a cost to the Exchequer to implement this and it would be folly not to raise that. The people who voted for me are more concerned about having enough money to survive at the end of the month. They would like to know where their taxes go, but first they want to know where the income they and their families need to survive will come from.

The Bill does not go far enough because it does not show people how indirect taxation is spent. People are exercised about issues like the number of Government Ministers who availed last year of tax write-downs using the dual abode allowance. That is what people are exercised about, not just the broad headlines of how much goes into education or health. They want to go into the nitty gritty of wasteful spending by Departments and Ministers, of reports that were commissioned at huge cost but have not been implemented. How much did it cost the Government to fly to Berlin in order that the Taoiseach could pick up his European of the year award? People want to know that.

Information about Departments should be made public, and while Deputy Murphy's Bill goes some way to meet that by having orders of at least €5,000 published online, this should be done as a matter of course. I agree with the previous speaker that the Government either accepts or rejects this. We should not even have to wait for Committee Stage to do this. The Minister should tell the House he is going to build a calculator that will make all information available. A letter should then be issued to all Departments asking them to publish any orders above €5,000.

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