Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are, but we are looking for what we call rolling funds or, as I learned first in the local authorities, the multi-annual fund. As to how medium or how roving is multi-annual, I do not know. As roving as you like, I suppose, Acting Chairman. I do not know whether it is roaming or roving.

Recently, I spoke on the Non-Use of Motor Vehicles Bill. I was aghast. I made my horror known. We were talking about the situation of off-road vehicles. Many Deputies thought there was significant fraud going on and it is their right to believe there are persons not taxing vehicles and going to the Garda and getting them signed off, as if the gardaí all were complicit in this deceit on a wide scale. However, the junior Minister at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government stated that the Government had acknowledged that there was overcharging of motor tax in the area of pay in arrears. It involved a nice sum. It was stated glibly in the speech that for some it was only €10 and for others €20 or more, and the Department was not going to pay it back because it was too cumbersome and awkward and it cost more than that to send out the cheques. Why could the Department not state that it would allow it against the next taxing of the vehicles? The arrogance of whoever wrote that speech and the arrogance of those who uttered it beggar belief. That is why we are here in this position tonight again. We have lost the run of ourselves in this country.

The permanent government has long since lost the run of itself and is dosing out medicine of any type it feels like to the public because it believes the public will take it. The day might not be too far away when the public cannot take any more, because it is not possible to get blood from a stone. It is very worrying and damaging to the body politic and to democracy. The Government is bringing out new imaginative names for different Bills - I would not mind if they were imaginative, but they are not. They are deceitful names as far as I am concerned. The Land and Conveyancing Bill deals with the Dunne judgment. The eminent Mr. Justice Dunne, in his wisdom, made a judgment and the Government has to change the law to deal with it. Why not call it the repeal of the Dunne judgment Bill rather than the Land and Conveyancing Bill, as if it dealt with cottage acres and plots that were squared off 50 years ago and might have been mis-squared as a result of bad mapping? This is deceit as far as I am concerned. It is not right or fair. We were all forced into a situation at the time of the introduction of the bank guarantee, for which I voted. I have regretted it ever since, but we were told we had to or else we were facing into the abyss. We should have got guarantees then but many members of the Cabinet did not know. I was summoned to Dublin to meet the then Minister, the late Mr. Brian Lenihan Jr., and told that if I did not vote for it most of the credit unions in the country would be closed down, with all the savers affected. Last Thursday night I attended a very pleasant 50th anniversary function in Clonmel and I said that. Credit unions are now being made into scapegoats even though they are keeping the country going and have done so in tough times. The Government is now putting legislation on top of them to deal with the sins of the banks.

I am delighted the Minister, Deputy Howlin, has arrived back in the Chamber. I took issue with him this morning. If he holds clinics in his constituency he will know all about what I am talking about. He would certainly know that the words I utter here are not silly - I hope they are not silly. I certainly would not describe anything he or anybody else says as silly. It is what is in my mind and what I am able to say. I do not have ministerial staff writing scripts for me. Two weeks ago Deputy Tom Fleming had a Private Members' Bill and the Minister of State had 15 minutes to deliver a speech scripted by someone. She sat down after seven and a half minutes and the House had to adjourn. In fairness to the Minister of State, she accepted the Bill afterwards and did not oppose it. Anything I say is from my heart, ó mo chroí. I say it in all honesty and in all compassion. I live in the real world, out in the country in the sticks. I receive calls on a regular basis from Wexford, Loch Garman. They are not about hurling or tickets for the Leinster final, but about the crisis facing ordinary people, especially people with farms, and the behaviour of banks and institutions in the name of this State in what I can only call State terrorism. These are not my words, but the words of a coroner in Tipperary. They are blackguarding and frightening the compliant people, not the big people who never wanted to repay their bills and who have massive resources and can have barristers take actions in the High Court or Supreme Court. I am talking about the ordinary citizen.

We are discussing voted expenditure.

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