Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This debate is welcome. However, the motion has a whiff of populism about it. As somebody who comes from a left, republican position, I believe in good public services, but I also believe in spending public money very well. We need to stop waste. Although those of us on the left advocate spending public money and creating good public services, it does not mean that we support wasting public money. That is the difference. Every euro of taxpayers' money has to be spent well. However, bringing in an Elon Musk or Michael O'Leary to run the show and oversee it will bring chaos. We are watching that in one of the largest economies in the world, never mind the chaos it would cause in our small country.

The examples of waste are shocking. We can list off a dozen, including the security hut. Some of the stuff I saw during my time as chairperson of the Committee of Public Accounts was absolutely shocking. There were open-ended, Wild West-type contracts in respect of the national children's hospital, which were wide open to exploitation, and thousands of claims by the contractor for more money, in addition to arbitration, court cases, etc. On metro north and the metro projects in Dublin, and this is one that defies me, how can hundreds of millions of euro be spent on a project when not even a shovel has been stuck in the ground? That money went to the private sector. This is astronomical stuff. Projects are being held up in the Minister of State's constituency of Longford-Westmeath, and in the constituency of Laois, because money is wasted on stuff relating to the national children's hospital. We need new health centres all over the place. We do not even have a primary care centre in Portlaoise, which is a town with a population bigger than Kilkenny city, because of this kind of waste of money and incompetence.

We should have good public services and we should spend money on them. The public will back that. The public generally has no problem paying tax. I do not want to speak for all of them, but certainly the people I come across and those who vote for me do not mind paying taxes. However, they want to see that they have health services, school places for their child who has autism, and affordable housing for their children to buy. That is what we need.

The debate is welcome but it cannot just be a debate where we get up and say, "That is grand. We had a good discussion here today." There has to be action. The Minister of State credits himself with getting things done. I will hold him to that, which I mean in a positive way. We need to get things done. The Minister of State has a role in respect of the OPW. There is some scandalous waste of money at the OPW but I also acknowledge the good work it does. I can list some of the projects in County Laois that the OPW oversees, including Heywood Gardens and Emo Demesne. I could list many more, including oversight of monuments, etc., and the good work that is done there. Good work is done but there are deficiencies that need to be fixed.

I will focus on the HSE. This is a very important issue. As I understand it, all parties in the House signed up to Sláintecare, which is the creation of a national health system for the first time in the more than 100 years of the State's existence. We have a mixture of voluntary, private and public in health - a mishmash. Again, I watched what was going on at the HSE over the past five years through the Committee of Public Accounts and tried to make some sense of it. This country puts more than €5,000 per person into the public health system annually. That is fine and we should do that. If we include the cost of what people pay privately, it is heading for €7,000 per head of population. There are countries in Europe with good economies and a high quality of living that have walk-in health systems, which do not have the years of waiting lists we have. It is four years for a hearing test or hearing treatment and four years for an eye test. I could go on and on, for example, it is two and a half to three years for a hip replacement.

These countries have good public health systems. We do not, despite the fact that we pump in more money. One of the reasons is the layers of bureaucracy and management. The system was created by the then Minister for Health, Micheál Martin, but we cannot go backwards. We have to move forward.

The other thing is that private companies are milking money out of the system left, right and centre. There was an agency secretary employed for almost seven years by the HSE. As we know, agency staff cost more. Eventually, the secretary was employed as a direct employee. That is just one example of where direct employment was cheaper. We need action. We do not need another Department. We have the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and the Office of Government Procurement. It is clear that they need reform, and we need to hold people to account at a senior level.

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