Joe O'Toole (Independent)

There is no doubt that cases such as that raised by Senator Brian Hayes are widespread. An inconsistent approach is taken to those who enter and leave the State. I recently received representations from a person running a business in Munster concerning an employee from a non-EU country who was here officially and legally. When the employee in question experienced a problem with his visa, he was informed by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform that he must leave the country but the matter would be sorted out on his return. However, on his return he was stopped at Shannon Airport. If the business person in question had not intervened with senior officials in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, the employee would not have been allowed back into the country, yet the reason he left in the first instance was to fulfil some stupid departmental rule. There is no logic to some of these cases. Senator Brian Hayes has raised an important matter.

Yesterday, I referred to the money which was not spent by the Department of Education and Science. Over the course of the day, I received at least four proposals from various organisations involved in education outlining how they could usefully spend the money. One such proposal was made by Educate Together, an organisation with up to 50 schools around the country, which is trying to run a national office.

As a former Minister for Education, the Leader is aware that the Department requires organisations, such as Gaelscoileanna, Educate Together, the Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland, etc., to have management structures in place before departmental support is provided. Why does Educate Together not receive a fair level of support? Why is the Department returning money when it is needed by this organisation, which does a job on behalf of the Department?

The Leader knows that if the Department is making changes, it must deal with the different management structures. For those working in the management structures, it is a full-time job and people should be employed on a full-time basis in them. These people are acting officially and legally. We should propose to the Minister for Education and Science that groups such as Educate Together would get an appropriate amount relative to their size to operate their management structure.

In the last two days, there has been extraordinarily negative publicity about the Office of Public Works. We should have a debate on the report of the Committee of Public Accounts because the OPW has done fine work for us in Leinster House 2000, Government Buildings, Dublin Castle and numerous other places around the country. The Office of Public Works managed to secure 115 buildings to deal with refugees and asylum seekers and only got five wrong — it is not even clear by how much — but it is being absolutely vilified in the media. It does not do us any good. If the OPW does something wrong, we should deal with it, but we should balance that with the things it does right. It has done a great job in recent years and these public servants are being unfairly vilified for cheap headlines.