Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste says there should not be a consequence-free zone. This Government is a consequence-free zone. This Government is an accountability-free zone when it comes to waste. You speak about the Arts Council IT waste as some kind of shock, as if you are a passenger on the ship of State.

You are at the helm of the ship of State in the context of these issues.

I could spend the full day here giving a litany of Government projects in respect of which there has been waste, week after week, in the past four or five years. There is deep frustration among taxpayers at the level of Government waste. The Arts Council incinerated €7 million of State funding. We have nothing to show for that. What we have is a Government - the same Government that was in place a few weeks ago - shrugging its shoulders and saying it does not know what happened. That is an incredible answer for any Government to give.

I honestly believe that there is a culture of waste that is coming from the top. One of the pivotal issues of the general election campaign was the Tánaiste stating that he did not sign the contract for the national children's hospital. This culture of evasion, dodging, delaying and obfuscating is coming from the top and is seeping into every level of the senior Civil Service.

Let us look at the number of people who are involved. We had a senior Minister. Where was the oversight? We had junior Ministers. Where was the oversight? We had Secretaries General. Where was the oversight? We had directors and chairs of the Arts Council. Where was the oversight? We had an audit committee in the Arts Council. Where was the oversight? We have loads of people who are getting massive wages to oversee the spending of State money - citizens' money - and nobody is doing their job. Week after week, people are cursed to wake up to the next instalment of Government waste. People have had enough of this. People make jokes about the bicycle shed and the wall around the WRC. It is not a joke. What is happening to taxpayers' money is disgusting, and we cannot tolerate it any further.

We in Aontú have stated that it should be written into the contracts of senior civil servants that they have a responsibility to mind taxpayers' money. We have stated that there should be a junior Minister in the Department of the Taoiseach to report on live contracts to make sure they are not going over budget or over time in terms of delivery and that this person should report to the Taoiseach on a weekly basis in order that there would be full oversight of what is happening. Of course, this has not been done. We have stated very clearly that there has to be a cost to senior civil servants in terms of this waste. That cost should be up to including the loss of a person's job. If there is no cost involved, there will be no change and we will be talking about this forever.

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