Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The reason people are absolutely shocked by the spending of €9 million on mobile phone pouches, which is almost hard to put into words, is because I am assuming everyone here is constantly contacted by parents and families of those with disabilities and autism who are dealing with the fact that there are not enough places at either primary or secondary level. We do not have enough autism units. There are the small businesses that have gone to the wall. We have even seen the schools that find a difficulty in drawing down the necessary moneys. I will be dealing with some of these issues tomorrow as a Topical Issue.

There is a long, long list of public spending disasters. There has been €2.2 billion spent on the most expensive hospital in the world with no end in sight and no end date. There has been €336,000 spent on a bike shed. There has been €1.4 million spent on a security hut with an impressive roof; the roof is very important. Modular homes that were planned to cost €200,000 are going to end up at €442,000. Everyone accepts there are issues with inflation and there will always be extras and anomalies. We talk now of how we are going to review the process of how the OPW was enabled to see if we could even just talk about one of these things. We talk about the bike shed and say we might have a problem here and we might need to hit the brakes, but none of that happens. We will constantly do what always happens with government, which is that we will talk about learnings.

The phone pouches are being sold as a mental health intervention, but the particular issues that exist in relation to mental health go without saying. I have brought up the need for more staff for the mental health services in Louth and Meath, the need for a ten-bed extension that must be delivered, the fact there is a huge level of 55 or possibly more full-time staff who are not in place and the lack of a proper assessment facility in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. I could go on about all the lists related to CAMHS. This is a disaster and it needs to be walked back from, but we need to get a handle on the misspending of public money by the Government.

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