Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Certainly, nobody on this side of the House in any way laughs about such matters. The Deputy is entirely correct. They are extraordinarily serious matters. Men and women get up every morning, go to work, do a hard day's work and pay their taxes, and they want to see those taxes spent well to deliver for them and their families and communities.

It is also fair to say, however, that Government can only be accountable for what it is told. If there are officials in State agencies or others who are pursuing a project that does not adhere to the public spending code, that is not a small matter and it cannot and will not be a consequence-free zone. Let us be very clear. There are very serious consequences for politicians. We have a thing called an election. We put our name on a ballot paper and people in our communities go out and choose to vote or not vote for us. Everyone in here, including the Deputy, receives a mandate. People are getting a bit sick and tired, to put it mildly, of public money not being spent adequately and, as in this case, there being nothing to show for it. The Deputy is right about that. They are also tired of finding that there are individuals who are often somewhat anonymous when it comes to these issues.

Let us be clear - I am very clear on this too - that people can make mistakes. We do not want a culture where people are risk averse. People are going to say "That's different". It is absolutely different; but when a mistake is made, you have to engage. This was not an example of that. In my view, this was a very clear and flagrant breach of the public spending code.

I want to balance my comments by saying that in Ireland we do deliver an awful lot of projects very well. Our public servants deliver a lot of projects well, on budget, on time and even ahead of time and ahead of budget on occasion. The Deputy says he can list many projects. I can also list many projects that were delivered on budget and on time, be it the Moycullen bypass, the Dunkettle interchange or the Listowel bypass, to name just some in recent times. Other examples include new school extensions, new primary care centres, major hospital extensions like that relating to the Mater Hospital and St. Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny and the national broadband plan, which is the modern equivalent of rural electrification and which is on budget and ahead of schedule.

The Deputy is quite right. Today, we should be talking about the issue relating to the Arts Council. I do not dispute that, but we also deliver very many projects across the public service on time and on budget. I say this to be balanced in my comments. What has happened in the Arts Council is a cause of serious concern, however. What concerns me, as Tánaiste and as a coalition leader, is the question of whether it is confined just to this project and how we can have confidence in the overall governance structure and systems within the Arts Council and, as Deputy Bacik rightly identified, in departmental oversight of agencies. The responsible thing to do here is exactly what the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, proposed to Cabinet, namely establishing in the coming week an external review to get to the bottom of these matters and to report and for the Committee of Public Accounts and others to have an opportunity to examine this issue.

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