David Norris (Independent)

Enormous amounts of money have been taken offshore. People have every right to do this and we cannot punish them for it. Tony O'Reilly has plenty of money somewhere around the place. Can we not lure them back? In the old days there were tax incentive schemes, but we now have public programmes that are undercapitalised. Why not say to the people concerned that now they have got away with it and have their swag offshore, we will let them bring it back without taxing them on the profits? They would be doing the work for which we do not have sufficient capital.

I ask the Minister of State to recommend to the Government that it carry out a business efficiency audit in every Department. This would be useful, for example, for An Post which owns a warehouse around the corner from me on which rent of €108,000 per year is paid. It is empty. The only time it ever had anything in it was when one of the employees moved house, at which time it contained sofas, chairs, tables, fridges and cookers. We ought not to have such waste. We cannot afford that flab. I also ask the Minister of State to ensure the capital programmes are kept as intact as possible. This is important. The Government should not lose its nerve. For goodness' sake, it should not yet again let the Frank McDonalds of this world win and cancel the metro project. It is important that we give a commitment to carrying out this project.

I am glad the Government has decided not to go ahead with the wage increases for all of us here in Leinster House, although I love such increases. I am as greedy as anyone else and my snout has been in the trough, as was said here. I will accept that cliché. I snuffled up whatever I could. It is painful that we are not to receive our 1%, but the decision was the right one and I will tell the House why. When I was running the Hirschfeld Centre, I made it my practice not to ask anybody to do something I would not do. I worked on the door, behind the cash register and cleaned the drains manually when they became clogged. That meant that I could ask any other person in the organisation to do these things because I would not ask them to do anything I would not do myself. The financial implications of cancelling our wage increase are not worth a tuppenny damn, except psychologically. If we did not endure the pain, we would not be in a position to ask anybody else to do so.