Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

The amendment states: "The Courts Service is required automatically to notify the Minister of upward or any changes in maintenance orders." The Senators can bet their bottom dollar if there is money owing to the Department, I will go after it. Sometimes in the debate on social welfare, there is a lack of proportion regarding the amounts we are dealing with. While I am not one to sneeze at €1 million, €2 million, €20,000 or €30,000, my calculation is that, we spend €3,500 in the Department every second of every working day. That means we spend approximately €200,000 a minute and approximately €2 million every ten minutes. The reason I make this point is that the scale of savings to be made by focusing on the bigger issues runs to hundreds of millions. That is what will make an impact and help to improve things for people. We could spend €2 million chasing a sum of €3 million, but we could spend the same amount chasing a much bigger fish and get much greater bang for our buck.

With regard to savings, we will introduce an identity card later this year which will streamline the process in many areas, including service provision and overhead costs, and affect anybody playing the game of double identities. It will be a high grade identity card.