Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

The common theme that emerges in this debate, which echoes the discussions we have had on mental health care, is that the policy is in place but the money is not available to implement it. Other speakers have made this point in previous debates on child care. The budget did not provide an increase in funding for child care. Regarding Senator Mary White's announcements, we have to know where is the money coming from to make this happen, to ensure that another cloth is not being thrown over the eyes of the people who are trying to deliver good child care who will find that later in the year they do not have the money to deliver it.

I call for a debate on the delivery of public services. This issue has been touched on previously in terms of mental health, suicide and other issues. The Government has made many attempts in the past to compile reports on how we can better fund the delivery of public services. Under a programme called the expenditure review initiative, an attempt was made in 2002 to examine how money could be freed up to deliver better public services. That collapsed with only one in five reviews in the programme completed.

The successor to that initiative was announced in 2006, namely, the value for money review. A total of 66 reports were due for publication in December. Some 40 have not been published and not a single report can identify how additional funding or savings can be made to free up more funding for the delivery of front-line services. We heard many times in the past, and we heard again in the recent budget, about the Government's commitment to spend taxpayers' money better. Given that the last two attempts to do this have completely failed, why should we believe the third attempt will be any different?