Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I take the Senator's point that it does learn. However, it seems to go on year after year and I do not know that we actually take action. I am a great believer in that everything we do should be aimed at taking action.

I have been a Member of this House for 13 years and I have watched this charade repeat itself over and over. I have now come to the conclusion that we need a radical shake-up in how we approach the spending of public money. We need the same kind of creativity that came up with the National Treasury Management Agency to devise a totally new approach to how we do our spending. This would look at how we approve it in the first place, and then, above all, how we monitor the spending to make sure it is well spent and achieves the purpose for which it was approved.

The first step in bringing about this change is to admit that we currently have a dysfunctional system. Those 86.4% of respondents in the Independent Newspapers survey were right in that the Government is indeed incompetent when it comes to spending public money. It is high time we put our minds to setting this right. We have the objectives, ambition and the wish. What we now need is the determination to get down and do something about it.