Maurice Hayes (Independent)

Senator Ryan has raised some interesting points, such as the national development plan, which are a matter for debate on another day. I welcome the budget and I congratulate the Minister. It would be churlish to do otherwise. The fact there is so much money to distribute is a tribute to the Minister's stewardship of the economy and of the finances.

I am glad to see money going to individuals and being given into people's hands where they can spend it themselves as they wish. There are large swathes of the public sector in which money is not the problem. We should be asking people to give us more evidence of value for money that is being spent. If this is union-bashing, so be it. I managed a couple of large public sector enterprises and we never thought it was ideologically impure in any way to ask people to account for the money they received. This point was raised by the Acting Chairman the other day. I have never found senior management in the public sectors I dealt with who did not respect strong management. There is evidence of flabby management across the public sector which should be given attention.

Another matter I wish to raise was not dealt with in the budget. I do not raise this matter in a recriminatory sense but in the hope that it could be placed on the agenda and be considered. It concerns the question of philanthropy. The Minister has been very good in dealing with this matter. He has made it easier for people to give money to charity by means of the tax code. Ireland now has a generation of people with a lot of wealth and quite a number of them are anxious to use that wealth in a philanthropic way.

The question of inter-generational transfers of money is highly technical. People have money which they want to use in a philanthropic way while, on the other hand, there is a growing need in universities, in education, in health research and community work, where philanthropic funds can be deployed. These are very technical issues. I ask the Minister to think in terms of setting up a small group of people who would look at this in order to make it easy for Irish people with wealth and goodwill to dispose of their money in Ireland in a philanthropic way and to make it easier to do so than to export the money. That is the point I wish to make at this stage. Other than that, it would be impertinent of me to do other than welcome the budget and to congratulate the Minister.