Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

A pattern has developed such that if we say anything about the Government or a Department, we are accused of criticising civil servants. The Minister is the one who is held to account in this Dáil. I am holding him to account and nobody else when I ask questions in this Dáil, not civil servants. We had this with the strategic communications unit, SCU, and every time we mentioned it, the response was "those poor civil servants". We are holding Ministers to account, not civil servants.

The civil servants do their job, as we expect, in a non-partisan way. The Minister, however, is not doing his job in giving direction to civil servants as to what to do. That is where the accountability is. I feel that is not happening in respect of developing areas when I specifically question the Minister as to his requests for budget for the capital programme. It is all very well to have fantastic plans for the next ten years to build schools but the demand is there today. All of my colleagues will have questions tabled on a daily basis about specific school projects, as will the Minister's own colleagues. There is nothing the Minister can say. We think about the schools which I raised in a parliamentary question this week. These seven schools, including two in my own constituency in Whitecross and Lismullen, have had to apply for planning permission more than once because the permissions ran out. That is a real difficulty which is adding extra costs. There are various reasons but, certainly in Meath, I would put it down to the lack of money in the Department. The money was not available and these schools' planning permissions ran out. That is going to happen more and more.

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