Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

During the recent Fine Gael leadership campaign, the media was told that the Taoiseach intended to make "radical" transformative changes to the nature and role of Cabinet committees. From what I have heard, the most radical move seems to be to get rid of some of them or to bury them altogether. The Taoiseach may have reason for that. I have a question on some Cabinet committees. If one looks at the last Government in the last five years, the Cabinet committee on health has been an outstanding failure. This is the committee that cleared a White Paper, which had no costs or implementation schedules and was ultimately abandoned within two years of its publication, on universal health insurance. It insisted that HSE service plans would commit to levels of service that were impossible to deliver with the provided funding. To put it bluntly, there is a huge question mark around the Cabinet committee on health and how it works, and indeed others as well, particularly on housing. The help-to-buy scheme was launched with great fanfare last year. The Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, was entirely confident about it. He was warned that it would inflate house prices. Ultimately, the Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, agreed with Deputy Michael McGrath to a review of that. We learned within 12 months that the new Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has a very negative view of the help-to-buy scheme and is contemplating its abolition.

4 o’clock

I take the Taoiseach's point that he will either reduce the Cabinet subcommittees in size or have fewer of them, but it is difficult to ascertain how effective they have been in terms of decisive policy interventions that have made a difference to the biggest crises that are facing the country.

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