John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Government has a leadership role. It should insist that the original plan to bring Carlow and Waterford together to form a new university be executed. It is about time that the vested interests, including those in the education sector as well as the Department who probably do not want a university anyway because it would cost money, do what they are told. If the project is good for the south east and Ireland and creates jobs, let us have it. Why is the Government not declaring that, in the interests of business and our international profile, we need this university and vested interests will not be tolerated? The Government should make a point of supporting its backbenchers and Opposition Deputies from the constituencies involved, award university status to Carlow and Waterford together and stop the games being played with the process.

I touched on the issue of mental health, but the Government is an absolute and utter disgrace on the wider issue of health. It spent five years and more on this side of the House telling us how health could be handled and that it would implement best practice and abolish the HSE. It went half-cocked down that road and listened to no one. Alongside Irish Water, the HSE is now the largest quango of which we know. From its appearances before the Committee of Public Accounts, I can tell the Minister of State that it is not fit for purpose. Every waiting list is growing and older and marginalised people are not being accounted for or supported with services. The Government should hang its head in shame, given the number of people awaiting serious hospital operations. The medical card fiasco happened on the Government's watch. An administrative issue, it gained the State nothing financially and destroyed older people's belief that the Government would do what it was supposed to do, namely, care for the State's people. The Government failed them. To this day, it is only when people try to collect their prescriptions from chemists that they discover their medical cards have been withdrawn. Letters have been lost in the post, information sent to the centre has not been dealt with and communications from Deputies have been ignored.

Not only has the Government failed to learn from the situation with the HSE or to take account of the people it represents who are in hardship as regards their health, it has decided to create a similar quango in the form of Irish Water, leaving it in the greatest mess. Irish Water's board should be gone. If it was a private business, its board would be thrashed out the door and one would never again hear tell of its members. Indeed, we have not heard from the board or been told why its qualified members are not performing. The Government is encouraging Mr. John Tierney to take the flak. The Government members are a great bunch of lads. Why do they not take the flak? They created it. According to Deputy O'Dowd, doing so was wrong and he told the Government as much.

The Government is shouting about the end of austerity. All of the quarter Christmas bonus that it gives will be taken back in January by Irish Water. Let us examine what has happened. Assets owned by the State were transferred to Irish Water, a semi-State company. All of the corporate knowledge was also transferred to it free of charge. It has a magnificent budget of millions upon millions of euro to be spent on consultants. This happened on the Government's watch. Irish Water is of the Government's design, yet the Government expects people to pay for what has been spent on those consultants before they even get a drop of water. Some €300 million has been spent on water meters and €1 billion on fixing the infrastructure. Look at all of the money the Government has spent on consultants. Ownership of the State's assets went to Irish Water from the Irish people. The Government then told it that it could charge people for them as well. It is a disgrace and has led to the current fiasco.

While in opposition, those opposite asked for something that is never debated in the House, but they were not interested in it come government. The Comptroller and Auditor General produces a report every year and lays it before the House and the Committee of Public Accounts, forming our programme of work, but the House and Government do not discuss it. Nor does the Government take the actions proposed by the committee to stop wastage of money in the public sector. The Government might claim that there is not much waste, but there is. Some €31 million spent on a site in Dublin was lost simply because of incompetence and a lack of leadership in two Departments. The Department of Justice and Equality knocked down the State pathology lab that was being built, amounting to a further €4 million lost, because it did not know whether it would have funding available for the next two year. None of the €2.3 billion that is spent on local government is accounted for properly. I have not seen a single value for money report or special report from local authorities that means anything. The local government sector is an in-house operation-----

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