Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I notice the Minister of State, Deputy Browne, gave the Taoiseach the information on the meeting. It is correct. A meeting was convened, and there was to be another within seven days. Even when an independent councillor voiced his opinion that he had not had sufficient time to consider the 376-page report, the council proceeded with the vote, against legal advice that it could be subject to judicial review.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the Taoiseach is a decent person and has the public interest at heart, even though he is well able to spin. I am not going to stand here and be lectured to on whether there is no accountability at local level. The reality is that if we do not have accountability at local level, we cannot have accountability anywhere else. The members in question are members of the Taoiseach's party. These are questionable actions by directors of services and the county secretary, in which case they actually garnered a vote, and that has to be addressed. This whole debacle has served no purpose other than to emasculate SIPO. Is there an answer to that? Can the Taoiseach tell me what the purpose of SIPO is if this is not going to be addressed? To me, it is a complete waste of the public's money if something that took two years for SIPO to compile took less than seven days for Wexford County Council, under a Fianna Fáil chair, to do nothing about.

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