Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I wish to share my time with Senators Norris and Ross. I welcome the Minister of State. The Minister for Finance's paper and his speech were very interesting. I agree with much of it, particularly when he said that the Government has the courage to make difficult choices. I will concentrate on the areas where I disagree with the Minister. Margaret Thatcher said that there was no alternative in the '80s . I believe there are alternatives.

The Minister mentioned value for money. There is a tradition in the Department of Finance which does not look at value for money in the way that others look at it. Value for money, in the case of a business or an individual, means asking whether if we put an amount of money into something we will get value out of it. In business we would use key performance indicators to measure whether money spent resulted in the waiting lists actually reducing. If we can measure them we can we see if we are getting value for money. The Department of Finance say that if they provide a budget of €X , value for money is sticking to the budget and not going beyond it. I do not get a sense that they measure value on the basis of key performance indicators, such as hospital waiting lists. I read and listened to the Minister. He gave instances of seven different items of value for money, all of which involved staying within a budget and being encouraged to do so rather than looking for value for money. We have a difference of opinion as to what value for money is.

There are other ways of looking at it. One of the areas is the decision to take 1% of GNP for the national pension fund every year no matter how well the economy is doing. I supported that at the time but I now realise that it was too inflexible. In good years we should invest more than 1%. In other years we should put in less than that because we need to get better value for money. This is one of the years when we should not invest in the fund. This is not easy to do, but a firm, determined, committed Government can make the changes, even if it means making tough decisions. The Minister said that he has the courage to make the decisions and that is one step. We are paying €1 billion per year into the fund. That is the correct thing to do in the good years that Senator Mansergh talked about. We could make a dramatic change in this area.

Another area is the special savings incentive scheme. I supported it and was taking credit for being one of those who said two years ago that we should encourage people to spend less because there is inflation and encourage them to save more. The Minister responded with what I thought was a very good scheme, perhaps generous. It now seems incorrect. We should have the courage to admit mistakes. I think we should scrap it and say that we are sorry we got it wrong.