Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I expected that the amendments would be ruled out of order because I cannot do anything with moneys. That is the prerogative of the Minister for Finance. The problem is that over the past number of years, €2 million has just been floating around. There is no oversight in this House in any shape or form. That money just goes to the Secret Service. I have had this debate before. There is no other funding. It is tiny when we consider the scale of what we are doing here, so I will not delay the House too long. If it is money for informers, then it should come under the Vote for An Garda Síochána because it is responsible for that. If it is money for the Secret Service, it should also come under the Vote for An Garda Síochána because it deals with the security of the State. If you really wanted to, you could throw it under the Vote for the Defence Forces. Subhead J2, which used to be subhead G2, relates to military intelligence. Ultimately, those to whom I am referring here are still subservient to An Garda Síochána. It is a justice Vote, and I cannot understand why it falls under the brief of the Minister for Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform. It does not seem to state why. If it is for international espionage on behalf of the State or if it is a slush fund for embassies to buy secrets, then so be it.

Over the years, I have tried to ask about this matter. Every time I have tabled a question, it has been ruled out of order. Accounting is very important and has to be done. The only answer I got was in 2008, when it was stated that the purpose of the Secret Service Vote is to obtain information which is necessary for the security of the country and that given the sensitivities associated with a Vote of this nature, information relating to its operation is not made public. When Brian Cowen was Minister for Finance, he gave the same type of answer. It should be stuck somewhere. The Vote can disappear altogether and it can be a line under some Minister. If you look at the Revised Estimates, you can open the page but there is nothing there. There is no explanation and there are no capital costs. There are no wages, so it is not going on wages. If it was for wages, it would come under administration and that would explain it. There is nothing under travel, subsistence, training, development, premises or expenses. There is absolutely nothing. It is just €2 million that is floating around. If they stuck it in with the Vote for An Garda Síochána, which is more than €2 billion, then happy days. Nobody would ever hear about it ever again. It may be, as some people have said over the years, money to pay for informers or maybe for relocation, etc. I am not interested in that. A system was put in place after the Morris tribunal, whereby the Garda has to account for that type of money and any payments in any event. There is an accounting mechanism there, but there is no accounting mechanism for this.

I was trying to dig out the last answer in relation to the typo. I found an interesting one which shows how we need to account for it. In 1923, the President of the Dáil, W.T. Cosgrave, was giving out about the audacity of poor old Deputy Figgis in asking a question about funding for trawlers. He stated:

At no time have I any recollection of having sanctioned, in my capacity as Minister for Finance, the purchase of £4,000 of electrical machinery, or electrical gadgets, or whatever other sort of melodeon the Deputy was speaking about. It has not come before me.

All told, £87,000 was being given to buy trawlers. The trawlers had only been worth £250, but approximately £7,000 was being paid for each of them. W.T. Cosgrave was not happy that Deputy Figgis was getting "petty advertisement" from raising the issue. Things have not changed in some ways. I will leave it at that.

There are other appropriations, as I said, and there are other things that appear in the Schedule. I do not have a problem with them. Again, we can go back to the céad Dáil of 1920 and the appropriation that was made at that stage. Moneys were allocated to the Defence Forces, the Irish language consular services and the like. On 29 June, one of them was moved by the acting president that the sum of $1 million be voted to the Department of Defence. This was suggested by the president and the Vote would come out of the fund subscribed in America. It would not affect the moneys raised for the loan in Ireland. That motion was seconded at the time by Fionán Ó Loingsigh, who was from Kerry. It was carried. That was money to prosecute a war during that time.

I will not delay any further, but at some stage somebody has to get to grips with this anomaly. I have raised it and asked questions of various different Ministers for Finance and Ministers for public expenditure. I have not got much further than the answers that the then Minister, Brian Cowen, gave me. Now, however, the Ceann Comhairle seems to rule them out of order. I have checked committees to see if the Vote is ever discussed. It has never come up. It does not come up on the floor of the House. It is an anomaly that we need to address. We were dealing with another anomaly just before this when we spoke about private charter bills. These are things we need to tidy up.

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