Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach is three years in office and if the Government survives a five-year term, then we are 60% of the way now. Therefore, the shape of what the Government promised three years ago should be evident to our people by now. One of the promises made was that this Government would be entirely different to the regime that preceded it in the matter of how public affairs were conducted, particularly in regard to transparency and openness on the part of the State and State institutions. Does the Taoiseach agree that three years into its term, the Government's commitments on transparency and openness have been blown out of the water, coincidentally by the creation of the monster that is Irish Water and by how it has conducted itself? Does the Taoiseach agree, in the matter of Irish Water and the scandalous amount of taxpayers' funds that have been allocated to slush-fund-loving consultancies, which have made a fortune on the backs of the Irish taxpayer for decades, that instead of transparency, his Government has given the people opaqueness and instead of openness, it has given a continuation of secrecy? Is that the reality of what we face? Would the Taoiseach agree that his fine words and his supposed aspirations of three years ago have drowned in the re-emergence of crony capitalism in this State, particularly in the way that private consultancies are able to continue to have transfused to them tens of millions of euro of taxpayers' funds, the detail of which we know nothing about? Can the Taoiseach explain and defend that?

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