Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

None of that is good enough. Every single week, we hear about another scandal in respect of an IPAS contract. Huge sums of money were paid to people with no track record and there is no explanation as to why this was the case. We do not get these revelations from the Minister of State’s Department, by the way; it is usually journalists who give us information that is in the public interest and that we as a House should have control over. Take, for example, the most recent issue, that of Ryevale House in County Kildare. We found out through the media that the company in question, which has secured a substantial IPAS contract, cannot even provide water. In fact, according to newspaper reports it is alleged the company is actually robbing public water from a fire hydrant. How does that happen? How do we have circumstances in which somebody named by CAB as potentially involved in gangland crime can get an IPAS contract? How do we allow a system that sees a company move from having a café making a profit of €2,000 to paying the directors almost €5 million in wages? We need to ask these questions. If experience tells us anything, it is that if we do not tackle the misuse of public funds at source, with full transparency, mistakes will be repeated time and again.

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