Joe O'Toole (Independent)

While I do not tend to get involved in schools building projects, generally speaking, I have taken up a few cases in recent times. I have learned that public representatives are unable to access information. If I cannot give people a proper explanation of what is going on, there is surely a problem.

I will give an example of the difficulties I have encountered, without mentioning any names. When I rang the building section of the Department of Education and Science in Tullamore about a school, I spoke to a helpful lady who said she had been told she was not allowed to give information about the school in question. She told me I had to go through an office in the Minister's Department. I have the name of the person and the date written down. When I put down the telephone, I rang the office in the Minister's Department. I gave the details of the case to another named official and asked what would happen. The woman in question said she would try her best to get the information for me and would get back to me. When I rang back the next day to ask if I could be given the name of the person who said public representatives could not be given information, I was told I could not be given that information either. I was put on hold for a while before being told I had to ring another office in the Minister's Department. I was trying, as a public representative, to get information in all fairness and honesty.

Apparently, the theory that has developed is that information should not be given to Deputies and Senators. I do not mind if that is the case as long as adequate information is given to stakeholders, but that is not happening. The problems I was encountering in the case in question continued to the stage that someone in the Minister's Department suggested to someone in my office that if I was so concerned about the matter, I should stick it down as an Adjournment matter. To say that I was furious would be to put it mildly. Not only was it an unfair and incorrect way to deal with things, but it also demonstrated that there are no proper internal line management controls in the Department. It is a total waste of parliamentary time to raise each case in the House. We should not have to do our business in such a manner.

When I decided to examine where the Government stands on these issues, I found that an "organisational review programme" has been established by the Department of the Taoiseach. The programme involves a new way of managing the delivery of customer service at departmental level, an examination of the question of governance at departmental level and an evaluation of performance measurement and customer and stakeholder feedback. Is a similar approach being taken in the building section of the Department of Education and Science? Is there a system of customer feedback on performance in the Department? When I visited the Department's website, I learned that it has a change management unit and that a customer action programme was in operation between 2004 and 2007. The plan sets estimated response times for customers, stakeholders and clients who have queries. It sets out the Department's commitment to informing customers of the standards they should expect at the point of service. Under the plan, stakeholders should be given an idea of the standards of service they should receive and the estimated time it should take to process applications for main services.

That is what the Department of Education and Science says it should be doing. The Minister, Deputy Hanafin, should take responsibility for it. I am not trying to initiate a personal attack on her. I am absolutely agitated about this issue. The way things are being done is wrong — it should not be like that. If the Department lived up to the standards it has set, I would not be wasting the House's time tonight. The Department's stated intention is to monitor its achievement in meeting its targets and to review progress regularly. It aims to set standard response times to be achieved by its school building service and to inform its customers of such standards, but that is not happening. I would be happy if the Minister were to tell me that such standards are to be achieved, and if public representatives could find information on behalf of school authorities or tell such authorities where information can be accessed.

I do not know what level of governance we have in terms of internal audit and quality assurance systems. I want to have in place what almost every other public body has, namely, a quality assurance scheme where an internal and external auditor take a number of projects, in this case schools building projects, follow them through from start to finish and check whether they follow established and agreed procedures and timelines. In terms of how an internal audit review should be carried out, these procedures and timelines would be written on the website of the Department of Finance. The audit review should examine whether these are followed step by step, where a project goes wrong and value for money issues. This governance is not in place.

Several years ago when the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission was created, it had to establish an internal audit function and a method of calculating a response time to customers and examine how it dealt with the public. It also had to report on each of these and establish a risk factor.

An inventory should be established. I have followed recent discussions in the other House and elsewhere. It was interesting to listen to the discussion at the meeting last week of the Committee of Public Accounts. I do not have time to go into all of it but it began with a simple question many of us have asked, namely, how many prefabs we have in primary education. We do not know, and it not only a matter of not being able to get the information from the Department as the appalling thing is that the Department itself does not have the figure.

From my involvement in audit functions in various organisations I cannot understand how auditors can sign off on the assets of a Department without knowing what those assets are. I do not know how this is done and it raises a query. I am following up on this. I have been in contact with the Comptroller and Auditor General because I want to find out how this can happen. When thanking the people from the Department and the Comptroller and Auditor General for coming before the committee, the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts stated:

I hope that when the witnesses return before the committee next year, some progress will have been made on carrying out the inventory. I consider it to be a major failure on the Department's part not to have carried out such an inventory in light of all the comments that have been made for the past ten or 15 years. It is incomprehensible to think the Department is planning for the future without knowing what it has ... However, this must be done in the public interest and progress should have been made by the time the witnesses appear before the committee next year.

When the Secretary General of the Department tried to soften it down, the Chairman stated:

No, I made my remarks in the context of one of the issues we discussed today, namely, the use of prefabs, whether they are owned or rented, their quality, their age, how many pupils are condemned to prefabs and over what period of time ... I refer to basic information that will allow the Department to carry out proper planning.

The Chairman did not put a tooth in it. The Committee of Public Accounts was established to investigate these matters.

I do not know whether a quality assurance programme is in place. This discussion is a marvellous opportunity. In a political context, it is quite in order for people on this side of the House to argue with people on the other side about a Government decision. It is equally in order for people on the Government side to state they cannot take action because they do not have the money. This is the normal political process.

The difficulty is that I cannot explain to people why they are in the position in which they are. If the Minister were able to tell me the Department of Finance will give the Department of Education and Science so many hundred million euro this year, this is our programme, this is what we intend to do and we will keep a certain amount aside because we know we must prioritise certain people, I would understand it and defend it as I defended schedules of appointments on which I had to shake hands, write in stone and sign in blood. We will live with these. We might not like them but there is an understanding.

What is happening here is that we are creating a major political structure of some description. We all write letters to the Minister and local TDs and letters go over and back. This morning on "Morning Ireland" a Minister was quoted as stating the Department could not give him information on the particular school in Cork they were discussing. I am not interested in the individual school. I am interested in the lack of information. Something must be done. I want the Minister to tell me what she can do about the issues of internal audit, quality assurance, organisational reviews, governance structures and how we develop and implement policy in this area.