Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State and his officials. As we go into the Christmas season, the economy has rarely been in better order. Government finances are totally under control and there is full employment and high growth. Of course, there is a variety of threats and dangers on the horizon. That has always been the case and it always will be. However, we are in a better condition than we were in up to a few years ago and also in a better state than most of our partner countries in the European Union.

There is enormous appreciation of the new schools, new hospital wards, new roads and all the other things on which the Government has spent money. Of course there are isolated incidences of waste of expenditure, there always have been and there always will be. I do not believe the Comptroller and Auditor General will ever be made redundant. Lessons have constantly to be learned. I regret the attempt to present a totally distorted picture and to conjure up an image of large amounts of wasteful extravagant expenditure in order to sully the tremendous progress which is appreciated by most people. Our level of expenditure is very much at the lower end, about a third of national wealth, compared with our EU partners. If there is any argument it is a question of whether we should be spending a higher proportion on services. It is the absolute amount rather the relative amounts that count. We will be making a lot of progress on that side.

I give Senator John Paul Phelan notice that when we come to have a fuller debate on this matter, I will have looked up the Comptroller and Auditor General's reports for 1995, 1996 and 1997 to demonstrate to him that there is nothing extraordinary about what the Comptroller and Auditor General has reported on this year or last year. He made the same type of reports and found the same type of scandals, if one wishes to call them that, during the period when Senator Phelan's party was in office. This is an integral part of Government. The Comptroller and Auditor General is doing his job and the Government is doing its job.