Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

The Oireachtas spent €808,000 on a printer that could not fit into the print room. It then spent €230,000 fixing that room in order that it could be fitted in. It also spent €12,000 to store the printer until it could be installed in the print room. The Government spent €22 million on ventilators that never worked and a further €50,000 on storing them. One hundred electric buses were bought but did not move an inch for 18 months because someone forgot to buy electric chargers for them.

Some €300 million has been spent on metro north and not a shovel has been put into the ground. A total of €2.5 billion has been spent on compensation on adverse incidents or mistakes that have happened in the health service over the past ten years and we have seen the cyberattacks so far cost the State €100 million. We will need to spend another €657 million on security upgrades. We must remember that the current Taoiseach was in the Department of the Taoiseach at that time. He spent €15 million on PR that particular year when the National Cyber Security Centre got €5 million for its total budget, which is an incredible situation. We have had €2.5 billion on the children's hospital, 67 vacant OPW properties and 4,000 empty local authority homes, all during a national housing crisis, bike sheds, security huts, the WRC wall, the great wall of Tara, €7 million on an Arts Council IT system that never materialised, and now we have the latest instalment of the Government's waste, which is the National Gallery of Ireland burying a scanner for €120,000. We were told it was essential enough to buy but not essential enough to actually switch on and for seven years the National Gallery searched for a room to fit this scanner. Columbus found the new world faster than the National Gallery of Ireland found a room in which to fit this particular scanner. It is absolutely incredible. There is a significant pattern. We have citizens to the pin of their collar in terms of the taxes they are being charged, the charges they are paying on a daily basis and yet we have this Government incinerating its taxpayers' money on a daily basis on projects that are going way over budget with nobody being held to account. People are sick and tired of it. People are furious with this. It is an incredible situation. There is no doubt now that we are going to have a review and there could have an investigation. We will have a blizzard of words but a drought of any real action. This is the real frustration. I am quite amazed that the Taoiseach has come in to this Chamber today and basically outsourced responsibility for Government waste. He said it is somebody else's fault and asked how the Government could be held to account in relation to it. It is that culture the Taoiseach has articulated today that is at the heart of the fiasco factory that the Government has become. My question to him is: how he will make it stop?

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