Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Two weeks ago we debated in the Chamber the plight of SMEs throughout the country. Deputies on all sides of the House highlighted the difficulties which still exist for SMEs trying to access finance, in particular the cohort of SMEs whose banks are exiting the market, whose loans are being sold to foreign investment funds and for which there is no protection and limited finance. The lack of urgency of the Government on extending the credit guarantee scheme and constantly long-fingering it, while jobs are being lost as a result, is absolutely exposed when one sees the €5 million that went to the shareholders in an effectively insolvent company.

Many SMEs are being told they are not solvent, which is why they are not getting bank credit, and that they got too much in the so-called good days. They see €5 million being given to shareholders and a €100 million write-off for the company involved. They see an utterly dysfunctional relationship between IBRC and the Department of Finance. They try to understand how they are exposed while nobody in the Government really gives a damn about jobs going out the door, no finance being in place and the banks still ruling the roost.

They also see this reluctance on the part of the Government to establish an independent commission. The Minister of State said we would have a report from Mr. Justice O'Neill on 31 August 2015. How suitable, just in time for the budget when everybody will be speaking about that, and we all know what we will be speaking about after the budget. The Government hopes that by delivering it at the end of the summer nobody will ask questions. The Minister, Deputy Noonan, stated depending on the findings of the review further investigations will happen if appropriate. Who will decide whether it is appropriate? Will the House decide or will it be the Minister, who has been dragged kicking and screaming at every touch and angle into this debate?

We saw the Minister's mask slip spectacularly last Thursday on "Today with Sean O'Rourke". We saw the pressure he is under. For me, what the issue exposes more than anything is the cosmetic nature and the spin of the Government towards political reform. Why is it that when Deputy Catherine Murphy and every other Deputy in the House table a parliamentary question they need a degree in English to be able to phrase the question in such a way as to get the information required? Not many people would have the tenacity to go back 16, 17 or 18 times in the way Deputy Murphy did and for this she is to be applauded. We must also learn from this. The Government has done nothing to reform the parliamentary question system. It has done nothing to reform the reluctance of the system to answer basic questions.

The Government has done nothing to reform the committee system and to give the committees more power. The Government has done loads of cosmetic stuff such as sitting on Fridays and sitting extra hours. However, it is all rubbish at the end of the day when we see the Siteserv controversy and the work that Deputy Catherine Murphy and her staff had to put in. It exposes the political reform agenda as a complete sham by a Government that is driven by spin only. Pollsters tell the Government what to say, but when it is exposed by something like this, the mask slips. Parliamentary democracy should mean something, and as we celebrate and commemorate 1916, which is something that people laid down their lives for, what we have in this country is a sham. There are questions that come back unanswered, and smart people, for want of a better phrase, in the Civil Service spend their time working out how to give a load of words but not answer. That is what the controversy exposes. It could happen in any Department. The Minister knows that because he asked those questions in his time.

Every Department is reluctant to answer questions, and if we learn anything from the committee and the controversy, we need to reform how we get information. We will set up a High Court judge, appointed by people with a role in this, and he will provide a report at the end of the summer, just as we start discussing the budget and heading into an election campaign. Someone will then decide if it is appropriate to have a further investigation. Why is the Government afraid of saying that we will establish a commission of investigation on 7 May and await its report? Someone in the elected Government or the permanent government must be afraid of what such a commission would find. By long-fingering it and pushing it out to the budget or the election, they hope the interest will go away. It will not.

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