Jim Higgins (Fine Gael)

Last week, in speaking to a Private Members' amendment to a Government motion on decentralisation, I accused the Government of unprecedented arrogance. However, the sheer arrogance and indifference to public opinion regarding this motion, the U-turn and somersault shows that matters are getting worse week by week.

The Irish Times editorial on Friday last could not have been more blunt or accurate. The headline "A Political Slush Fund" aptly describes this political U-turn. The Taoiseach has defended the about-turn by trying to explain that the change is being made in the interests of transparency. What baloney. The absolute and only guarantor of transparency, as the Minister emphasised in the Dáil three years ago, is an independent disbursement board. Now this independent disbursement board is to be dumped. It is to be relegated to the role of being able only to comment on decisions taken by a Minister on where the money should go. In other words, it has been sidelined and is now to become a hapless bystander.

What wrong has it done to merit such shabby treatment? That is what I would like to know from the Minister of State when he rises to respond. The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, for his part, has attempted to defend the decision by saying that the removal of the decision-making process from the disbursement board would make the process more efficient and effective. He suggested there would be better co-ordination. That is more pathetic political baloney.

Let us be clear that what we are talking about here is a large amount of money, €175 million, on which the Government has set its beady eye and which it sees as a useful slush fund to fund the pet political projects in the run-up to the local and European elections. This is nothing but a smash-and-grab raid on moneys that do not belong to the State, private moneys left untouched for 15 years. The Minister for Finance on that fateful day, 20 June 2001, acknowledged such in very explicit terms. This is money to which the Government has absolutely no right. While the Government indulges itself in the greasy till, what about the community groups, those working in the area of social, economic or educational disadvantage? What about those groups working in the grossly and scandalously under-funded area of disability?

I have admired the Minister, Deputy McCreevy, in the past. He is somebody who shoots from the hip, who says what he has to say. I admired his stance on the public finances in the early 1980s. I admired certain political decisions he made about who should lead his party. I always recognised him and gave him credit for being a straight talker and a fairly straight actor. How the Minister, Deputy McCreevy, can countenance such a complete and absolute betrayal of the commitments he gave to the Oireachtas three years ago is simply incomprehensible.

I now turn to our friends in the Progressive Democrats, the great custodians of the common good, the public watchdogs. We all recall the Minister, Deputy McDowell, up that pole in Dublin with that very decisive poster, "Single Party Government — No Thanks". What has happened to the watchdogs? The watchdogs have become lap dogs and are nothing other than a spare wheel, a mudguard on this vehicle that is rolling roughshod over the public weal. The Acting Chairman should not nod his head; he is supposed to be independent when in the Chair.