Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I second the motion. I thank Fine Gael for asking my party to support this motion which it does enthusiastically. Fine Gael and the Labour Party do not agree about everything and sometimes we disagree quite strongly, but it appears we have an instinctive sense of what is decent in politics that the biggest party in the State has lost. We would make mistakes if we were in Government; we would do things that perhaps many of us here in our different parties would not be too happy with. I am certain that neither Fine Gael nor the Labour Party would allow themselves to be pushed into this sort of smash and grab raid on money that does not really belong to the State. This is money which the State has expropriated. When one becomes involved in expropriation, one has a certain obligation to be honest, fair and transparent about it.

When the Dormant Accounts Bill was going through the Houses of the Oireachtas, there was a fairly unanimous view that it was a timely Bill, that when the money was assembled it would be used for worthwhile causes as additional expenditure and that the method of disbursement would be independent and be seen to be independent. The only great question that arose was that nobody was quite sure how much money would be involved. There was a tendency, perhaps correctly, on the part of the Minister for Finance, to warn people that this might be a small sum of money because some of the figures quoted in the media were huge. Like the rest of us, he was a little sceptical about how much money people would leave in accounts. It then emerged that it was not such a tiny sum of money. Even after a few hours searching, I find it difficult to ascertain precisely how much money will ultimately be disbursed. One newspaper report states it could be as high as €250 million. It seems certain that it is at least €150 million and rising, as Senator Higgins stated.

This sum of €150 million obviously began to tempt Fianna Fáil. As I have observed over the years, Fianna Fáil has a couple of key characteristics. One is its inherent allergy or inherent tendency to be allergic to real transparency, as has been seen in the electronic voting debacle and as is evident in its deliberate filleting of the Freedom of Information Act. It also has a profound capacity to be allergic to real project appraisal, as has been seen in Punchestown, Abbotstown and many other projects. It has its pets and wants to spend money on them. However, Fianna Fáil is not allergic to money and its disbursement. In this case it saw €150 million on which it was not going to get its hands. When it was a trivial sum, in its eyes, it was quite prepared to be the advocate of accountability, transparency etc., but when it could make a difference it became different.

Even as it does so, Fianna Fáil tries to talk out both sides of its mouth. The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs was reported as saying the Government has to change the procedures because nobody realised how big the sum of money would be. The Committee of Public Accounts was invoked. Last week the Taoiseach stated that it was a very small amount of money and nobody should be making a fuss about it. The Taoiseach thinks it is a small sum of money, the Minister thinks it is a big sum of money and Fianna Fáil grabs it and hopes the rest of us will not notice. We did notice and we will continue to notice.

I have a couple of issues to raise with the Government. It has stated that it will continue to give the dormant accounts board an advisory role. As I heard that said, I thought of the human rights commission which also has an advisory role and which the Government has blissfully ignored on every single piece of advice it has offered. Advisory boards will be listened to and will be ignored and Fianna Fáil will spend its slush fund as it wishes.

I emphasise that I am talking about Fianna Fáil because something has happened in the past six months. I was first elected to this House 23 years ago and never had the misfortune to have to serve here under a majority Fianna Fáil Government. In the past six months we have effectively seen a majority Fianna Fáil Government with a collection of PD poodles who no longer know how to be different from Fianna Fáil. It is the long spoon syndrome yet again. The PDs lost their long spoon some time around June 2002 and have been drawn into the Fianna Fáil circle. We have a Fianna Fáil Government with all the arrogance that we read about in those dreadful days 25 years ago when Fianna Fáil was accountable to nobody. Now Fianna Fáil is telling us that it knows what is good for all of us, that it will do it better than the board it set up. There is no rational reason for this except one — it is too big a sum of money for a Fianna Fáil Minister to allow into anybody else's hands when it could make the difference in a variety of election contexts. The Government has announced that the money will not be disbursed before the local elections which I think means it has given up hope of doing well at the local and European elections and will hold on to it for the real one which will come two years later, the general election. I recall a Minister for Social Welfare who travelled the country with cheques in his pocket from a slush fund which he gave out as £1,000 here and £1,000 there. Fianna Fáil knows how to give out money; it is what it is best at——