Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State. How he takes this issue forward will be critical for the nation in the context of the message he sends to the public. Not one of us would be present if we did not serve a public. I am disgusted by the recent revelations concerning FÁS because, like everyone else, I am familiar with the work the organisation does in our communities, which I have admired, through CE schemes and so on. What this has shown me is the sickness in the system, a sickness over which the Government is presiding. Senator Ross has done the State a huge service, as has Fine Gael for standing on principled positions until this was outed. I cannot justify €640,000 being spent on travel junkets in the past four years and the Committee of Public Accounts must investigate whether this spending was valid. I read in last weekend's The Sunday Tribune that €240 was spent by a senior executive in FÁS to travel from Terenure to Kildare Street. My God. Who is this person, what does he do and who does he think he is? It is an outrage to spend €240 for what is probably a €20 taxi ride.

With regard to the exorbitant spending on the trips to Florida, since when did we get into space travel? I have not heard of the outputs in terms of missions or astronauts. Do they exist? If so, the Minister of State should tell us about them and what we got out of this. Is it more than we put into it in terms of all this expensive travel, wining and dining at the K Club and all this rubbish that is not needed but is going on?

The public outrage was only right and proper when Mr. Molloy went on "The Pat Kenny Show". Was there any apology by Mr. Molloy? I have not heard it. Does his resignation make everything right? In my view, it does not.