Brendan Ryan (Labour)

They do not want to listen, so I must say this in simple words. My party in Government decided to do something about real decentralisation in the Education Act which was passed in the 1992-97 period. It decided to decentralise power in education. Packing civil servants around the country is not decentralising power; it is decentralising civil servants. This Government believes, as did its predecessor, in centralising power. It has taken power away from health boards and local authorities and from local education authorities which would have decentralised education because it said it was too expensive and would cost €20 million.

The Government cannot tell us how much this exercise will cost. The Department of Finance, which is so good at telling everybody else how much things should cost, does not know how much this programme will cost. This is the Department which lectures the rest of us and the Houses of the Oireachtas and tells Members of the Oireachtas what they are entitled to claim in expenses, but which does not know what the decentralisation exercise will cost. The reason is that it was thought up by politicians as a political gimmick three days before the budget.