Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

There is a policy sometimes on the part of senior Ministers to hear no evil and see no evil and to say "Oh, we didn't know what was happening." The Tánaiste mentioned that before. It is the responsibility of a Minister to know what is happening in his or her Department. You cannot insulate yourself from crises such as this by pleading ignorance over and over again. That is not an excuse when it comes to waste.

We do not even have the opportunity to bring the former Minister, Catherine Martin, before a committee of the Oireachtas because 11 weeks after the election, there are no committees. I understand it is unlikely that there will be any committees for a number of weeks, which, again, shows us the dysfunction of and the glacial pace of accountability within the system.

This is not a victimless crime. When you burn through so much money, there is a cost. The amount involved would have paid for 25 homes and we could have put 75 people into those homes. It would have paid for 600 scoliosis operations. It would have paid for six CAMHS teams around the country. Not only is the Government burning up taxpayers' money, it is taking away that critically needed cash from the people who need it most.

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