Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

If I heard the Taoiseach correctly, there was one Cabinet sub-committee meeting in January and one in February. This means that, allowing for a month off in August, there are a maximum of 11 Cabinet sub-committee meetings each year. The Taoiseach has told us about his dislike of the system of Cabinet sub-committees. That may be an explanation for some of the matters in respect of which there are real holes in this Government's performance. I put it to the Taoiseach that perhaps he is not getting the kind of detailed information he, as leader of the Government, requires and which the other members of his Cabinet also need. For example, how many Cabinet sub-committees on average does the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, attend? How many are he, the leader of the other party in government, and the two Independents entitled to attend? The Taoiseach presumably meets his Fine Gael colleagues quite a lot. How does he arrange to meet the other Government partners, namely, Deputy Ross's party and the two Independent Ministers? Perhaps the Taoiseach arranges to meet them privately, but he is very busy and I doubt he has that much time to do all of that. This could be the explanation for the problem in housing. Perhaps this is why there is such a blind spot regarding matters such as social and affordable housing, notwithstanding the increases in other forms of housing. We are all genuinely perplexed. This Government has a lot of resources and came into a very good situation. Its failure to deliver on housing, health and an number of other issues is pretty disappointing.

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