Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill, which I will be opposing for a variety of reasons. We are here on 20 December, and the Dáil is adjourning in a few hours and unless this Bill is passed, there will be no budget to spend on 1 January. That is a shambolic way to run any organisation. If this place caught fire today and we could not pass this Bill, the Oireachtas and its staff could not return on 1 January. There is now a Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform but we are still here on the last hour of the last sitting day of the year to address the situation where there is no budget for 1 January 2013. That is an indictment of that Minister.

The Minister of State acknowledged in his speech that there must be changes in the senior management structures of the Oireachtas and stated that this matter would be dealt with in 2013. This should have been done as part of this legislation on a properly planned basis over recent months, not on the last sitting day, when most Members are properly leaving the House, although I hope they have not all left because there will be a vote on this during the passage of the legislation.

This Government was elected on a mandate of Dáil reform. Is this the Government's definition of Dáil reform, coming in on the last sitting day, when the whole country's focus is moving away from events in the Oireachtas, to pass the budget to allow the building to open on 1 January? Unless this Bill is passed, it would not be possible to even pay the electricity bill. That is no way to run business. We are talking about a mammoth amount of money, after the Government inflicted a lot of pain on people in the budget through cuts to the respite care grant and child benefit. The decreases included in this Bill are not on that scale at all and although there have been budget savings in individual Members' own expenses, that level of reduction is not being mirrored across the entire Oireachtas.

I do not understand why this cannot be part of the normal Estimate process each year. A significant portion of total Government expenditure is not being voted upon in this Chamber. We get the departmental Estimates each year which are published on budget day but billions of euro in interest on the national debt, payments to the Central Fund, for the Houses of the Oireachtas and for pensions for retired judges and politicians are not voted on as part of the normal Estimates process. There is a mechanism for non-voted expenditure. All of that should be centralised because if this is the national Parliament and the Minister is serious about reform, approving expenditure in advance should be done in this House.

There should be provision to discuss the programme of work so that when a committee is discussing its estimated expenditure for the year, it has a line of activities that must be matched with those of the Department. There is none of that today. There is just a request for €324 million so we can go away for Christmas and resume again on 1 January. That is what this Bill is about and it is no way to do business.

If the Government parties had campaigned during the last election saying they would carry on without any change, I would understand this approach. The parties in government, however, were elected on the basis of change and we have seen the worst form of it here. Doing this on the last sitting day before the Christmas recess adds to public cynicism.

Apart from the financial side, I also oppose the legislation because it allows the Oireachtas to continue in the same old way. We were told there would be Dáil reform, that it was fundamental to both Fine Gael and the Labour Party before the election, and fundamental to the Government. The Government claims to have increased the number of sitting days and we have seen public relations and spin on Dáil reform but not substance. There are Friday sittings but they are not proper sitting days with an Order of Business; they are simply designated for Private Members' Bills. That is a sop to show the Dáil is sitting more hours. Fianna Fáil has put forward 42 Private Members' Bills in the past 18 months, and two at most have been accepted.

Almost all get voted down or long-fingered. Very few of the Bills that have gone through, that have been published by the parties and dealt with on the Friday sittings, have been enacted. It is a bit of a sham the way it is operating.

One of the most important roles of Dáil committees is dealing with the Estimates process for the Departments. We all will be aware that the Estimates for the line Departments will probably appear at the committees in April or May next, or some time during the course of the year when half of the funding is already spent and most of the balance is already committed. It is becoming a pointless exercise. We need to have a meaningful debate in the Dáil and at Oireachtas committees on expenditure before it is spent, and we did not have that this year in the case of the Estimates of expenditure for the coming year. In fact, the Government acted in a retrograde manner. In the past few years we were moving to separate the expenditure in the Book of Estimates which would be published in advance of budget day and now we have them all on the one day where the estimates of expenditure get caught up in issues such as child benefit cuts and the family home tax, and those issues do not get properly dealt with.

The Government promised - it was one of the parties' proposals prior to the election - to reduce the number of guillotines. This legislation is being guillotined today. Second Stage, Committee Stage, and Report and Final Stages are being taken in one sitting on the eve of Christmas, and that is Dáil reform. The amount of guillotines that have been introduced here is not necessary. There is no reason this legislation could not have been taken at the select committee last week, the previous week or the week before that; it should not be coming in here at this stage.

We were promised changes to the committee system. The reason I highlight these points is the public wants to know for what is this €324 million. They voted for the Government on the basic that there would be Dáil reform. The committee system has actually deteriorated. There are now some committees with 27 members. The Minister of State, Deputy Alex White, chaired the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, of which I am a member, before he was promoted to Minister of State. Having 27 members on one committee is a joke. The result of the joke of setting up what are, on the face of it, a smaller number of committees is having a plethora of sub-committees that are unwieldy and on which there is little focus. There are more committee meetings in this House than there ever was in any previous Administration. Some of them are being called sub-committees but they are actually committees. Taking the major committees and the sub-committees, there is much less focus in committee work.

This Government promised that the Dáil would hold a banking inquiry and two years into office, there is no sign of this happening. There is a possibility of legislation to allow some Oireachtas inquiries but that has yet to be agreed. I would safely say we will adjourn for the summer with no banking inquiry. That was a fundamental promise to the people of Ireland by the parties in government and it is not being delivered in terms of Dáil reform. If the Dáil was really meaningful, there should be a banking inquiry up and running by now but for some reason the Minister is holding back.

The main party in government, Fine Gael, promised that when in government it would cut the number of Deputies by 20. Because of the increase in population, in line with the Constitution, the number can be reduced only by eight, to 158, which is what will happen. It was known in advance that there was an increase in population. It was a false promise to the Irish people that they would cut the number of Deputies. The promise was made in the full knowledge of the main party in government that it was not remotely possible within current constitutional limits to keep it. As the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Rabbitte, stated on television, "isn't that what you tend to do during an election?" - nobody expects one to hold true to one's promises. That adds to the cynicism in public life.

The Taoiseach promised abolition of the Seanad. I do not see anything about this. If we are agreeing a budget for the next three years, there should be something in it about where we stand on the Seanad. It has been promised repeatedly. Promises were made and votes were won on the basis that they would cut the number of Deputies by 20 and abolish the Seanad. That is not reflected in this figure where the Minister of State is coming in here on the eve of Christmas looking for €324 million so that we can open up the building after Christmas. The Bill is being brought in here almost under the cover of Christmas week in the hope that the people will not see what is going on.

Finally, the Oireachtas has not fully engaged in proper explanations of the Government's approach to the various European summits. The Government has the stock answer that it cannot disclose its hand because one might see what it is looking for beforehand, but that happens in other parliaments. Apart from coming in to look for €324 million for the next three years when the Houses are breaking up for the Christmas period, the Government is guillotining this legislation, with all Stages to be taken here in one session. There has been no meaningful Dáil reform. One can trot out the PR about the extra sitting day, but I pointed out how meaningless some are. Those are not proper sitting days and by and large the Government has not adopted the Bills taken here on Fridays into legislation. Off the top of my head, I can think of two Bills out of 42 from my party, the main Opposition party. There was not proper Dáil reform, in terms of the committee system or of the Estimates process. The Estimates should have been discussed calmly in committee in the cold light of day. We should be seeing the plan of services for Parliament over the next three years. This should be in the legislation, not a promise to review it next year. The review of the role and function of senior management structures of the Oireachtas, which is promised for next year, should have been done this year in advance of this budget being approved. On that basis, my party cannot support this slapdash approach by the Minister on the eve of Christmas.

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