Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Deputy Andrews. What is more, there is no Minister who will come forward and say he or she is accountable for this and nobody to take responsibility for the wasteful decisions that are being made around it. We will get to the bottom of that on another day.

This Government's wasteful spending of other people's money must be brought to an end. The plan to spend €9 million on fancy phone pouches for schoolkids is just the latest scheme to spend taxpayers' money recklessly and needlessly. I have worked with many schools even before I entered political life and never ever has one of them raised with me the need for storage solutions for mobile phones. What they ask for is funding to keep the bills paid, for new builds and modifications to address crumbling facilities and replace prefabs, to reduce class sizes, to provide autism units, to replace equipment, to get mental health supports and so on. Just think how far an extra €9 million would go to addressing CAMHS waiting lists which, since the formation of this Government, have risen from 2,115 children to 3,681 children waiting for their first appointment. In March of this year, in the Mayo, Galway and Roscommon area, there were six times as many children on waiting lists for mental health services as when this Government came into power in 2020. The numbers waiting increased from 41 to 233. In some cases, children wait more than a year to access mental health supports. The waste of €9 million when it could make a real difference in other areas is a travesty.

As we all know, this Government has a long and distinguished record in wasting the tax collected from citizens' earnings and the VAT they pay on almost every item purchased: the €336,000 bicycle rack, the €1.4 million security hut, and the relentless escalating overruns on the national children's hospital. How many more mismanaged and wasteful projects are coming out? The Government has neither credibility nor accountability when it comes to public finances. It has presided over a culture of waste and cronyism. There are so many more appropriate ways to spend €9 million. What about the children who have been robbed of their childhoods because of the pyrite scandal that nobody is responsible for?

It just happened that thousands of families bought and built homes with crumbling blocks. Yes, it just happened - business as usual, nothing to see. It just happened. A Sinn Féin Government would implement the right priorities, putting citizens first and ending this shocking and sickening waste of money. I was absolutely alarmed to hear earlier about increases in the pyrite and other defective block scandals and - I hope I read this wrong - about it not being issued to people who have already submitted applications. That is absolutely appalling.

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