Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Another day and another revelation of Government waste of public money. Over the weekend, it emerged that in 2017 the National Gallery of Ireland purchased a scanner at a cost to the taxpayer of nearly €125,000. The scanner has never been used because a suitable room could not be found to accommodate it. This equipment, which cost the people €125,000, has sat idle for eight years. This of course was not a once-off. The Taoiseach will recall that in 2018 the Government purchased a printer for the Oireachtas to the tune of €800,000. That printer lay idle for ten months because it could not fit into the building. Eventually, a further €230,000 of public money had to be spent on works to the building to get the equipment in.

What are people to make of all this? Government waste of public money is not a recent phenomenon, far from it. A Government culture of waste and incompetence is deep rooted. It has been going on for a very long time. We hear the infuriating example of taxpayers' money squandered with nothing done about it. It is a case of one revelation of waste after another. The public might well ask what is coming next and where does all this end? This week it is the scanner that has not been used. Add to that the €366,000 bike shed, the €1.4 million security hut, the €9 million for phone pouches and nearly half a million euro on a perimeter wall. The list of Government's scandalous waste of public money is as long as your arm, yet not a single person has been held to account.

In this Government culture of waste and incompetence it seems nobody is responsible. Where is the proper Government oversight of how public money is spent? Where are the checks and balances and reporting within public procurement processes for which the Government is responsible? How is this allowed to happen time and again? The Government can feign anger, say this has nothing to do with it and blame the National Gallery. It can point the finger at anybody and everybody under the sun for the most expensive bike shed, security hut or perimeter wall, but let us be clear - the buck stops with the Government. It is in charge and it is the Government's responsibility to ensure that public money is spent wisely and properly and to take corrective action when it is not.

Ordinary people see this for what it is. The Government either knows about the waste of public money and does nothing about it or it does not know at all and is grossly incompetent.

Maybe it is a bit of both.

Níl sa scanóir €125,000 nár úsáideadh riamh ach caibidil eile i scéal fada an Rialtais faoi chur amú airgead an phobail. Ní féidir leanúint ar aghaidh mar seo agus tá cuntasacht ag teastáil.

The Tánaiste, it seems, is furious. The Taoiseach appears to be bewildered by the whole thing, but the Government must give an explanation for the serial wastage of public money. Was this matter raised and discussed at Cabinet today? What does the Taoiseach propose to do about this latest episode of scandalous waste?

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