Joe McHugh (Fine Gael)

The Minister makes a plausible case and I do not believe he is being devious or trying to mislead Senators. As Senator Ryan stated, he is genuinely trying to map out the way forward and I agree with much of his language and many of his hypotheses. The bottom line, however, is that this dormant accounts fund will be a slush fund subject to ministerial approval at Cabinet level. It flies in the face of the approach taken by the Taoiseach who has always been an advocate of partnership. I agree with the Taoiseach's vision of partnership and multi-agency and inter-agency approaches as the way forward.

I advocate regionalising, decentralising spending and empowering the respective agencies in the regions. The real skill lies in tying together the different tiers, whether at agency level or among the voluntary or community groups, in a longitudinal way as opposed to taking a centralised, vertical approach. The public is sick to the teeth of vertical funding of projects, one-off allocations, slush funds and stopgap measures to appease certain groups and the wider electorate.

In the past fortnight, the Taoiseach and the Ministers for Arts, Sport and Tourism and Health and Children have visited County Donegal. I know the political reasons for their visits. Their job was to meet and appease certain groups by providing them with one-off funding and grants. These groups are fighting hard and lonely battles to try to mainstream their projects and form some kind of sustainable future for them. The Minister knows the public is sick of this type of distribution of funds. People are sick of the politicisation of grant aid with funds allocated to groups subject to ministerial approval.

While the Dormant Accounts Fund Disbursement Board will still be in place, it will not decide where the money goes. The Minister agreed that an inter-agency approach is the way forward. We need longitudinal thinking, rather than a vertical handout mentality.

The public will give out to Opposition parties and politicians, saying it is terrible certain groups get funding while others do not. They will claim there is no planning or preparation with regard to funding allocation. However, the public fall for it every single time, which is why the system still operates. Slush funds work politically because the public fall for them before elections, remember them for approximately six months and forget about them after a year. Perhaps it is a sad reality of human nature, but the way to counteract this is to have a more accountable, transparent system where funds are distributed through State agencies using an organised inter-agency approach and not through the Cabinet in a centralised manner.