Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senators for their comments. In addition to overseeing €45.1 billion, a key responsibility and challenge is to control spending to ensure quality of service, value for money and the effective use of resources. Building on the value for money measures introduced in recent budgets, the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Cowen, announced in his recent Budget Statement that the Government has agreed to an efficiency review of all administrative spending across the public service. This process is to begin immediately with a view to providing a comprehensive list of specific actionable proposals that will maximise efficiency. All Departments are to put forward measures to be considered by Government in the coming months.

Senator Twomey suggested the economy is going backwards and in the spirit of Christmas I will not be nasty in my response. There were bad days in the past but the worst were in the mid 1980s when my party was not in power.