Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, condemn the shameful acts of the people in Console. How was the HSE so slow in finding out how these massive sums of money were being misappropriated? Why was there not more thorough vetting of how the money was being spent?

Several senior administrative staff vet each application for home help services. Why did proper checks and balances not apply in a case involving such large amounts of taxpayers' money? It would not be unreasonable to expect the Revenue Commissioners or Department of Finance to have copped on to this matter much sooner.

This issue will affect the poor people who spend rainy days on street corners and at various events collecting donations in buckets to help vulnerable people. It will also affect the good people who always contribute to such collections. I have sympathy for those who do great work on behalf of their local communities and organisations that provide help to vulnerable people because it is they who will be affected by these malicious acts involving, as Deputy Mattie McGrath stated, the plunder and pillage of funds. It is disgraceful that the Health Service Executive provided such large sums of money without properly accounting for the way in which it was spent. On the one hand, it provides large sums of money without checking where or how they are spent, while, on the other, it deprives people of home help services at weekends, bank holidays and even on Christmas Day by refusing to fund them.

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