Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. It would be bad if we moved to a radical extension of the spending limits for elections. The good thing about setting expenditure limits is that it puts limitations on us. A great deal of money is wasted at election time and it does not have much influence as to who is elected. Outside the inflationary increases for which one is bound to provide, there is no argument for a radical increase in expenditure. It is good to limit expenditure during the election.

As part of his review, I ask the Minister of State to consider a six or eight month lead-up period. It is obscene that this amount of money can be spent six months in advance of an election and that once an election starts none of it is taken into consideration in election spending figures. We must find a way to overcome this.