Eoghan Harris (Independent)

If, as the political pundits seem to agree, there will be a change of Government at the next general election which may be soon, then I hope the new Government, represented by the Opposition parties here, will remember the old principle of clawback in the media, that whatever they give they take back with interest. Nothing will change for the new Government in terms of bad press coverage, public pressure, street demonstrations, etc. If anything, it will be much worse. That being so, the Opposition parties should exercise a little discretion on good news. I agree with Senators Mooney and Quinn that the negativity needs to end.

On the general situation that will face the new Government and in its interests, I ask the following questions. What disciplinary action has the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills taken against the civil servants who failed to spend the money they were given and which failure has been to the detriment of the building industry and of the children? The answer is that nothing will be done about any of them. That will go on until the Department of Education and Skills, like all of the other Departments, is privatised apart from a small hard core of public servants for discretion and confidentiality purposes. Ten or 20 would be adequate. If that was a private sector firm, heads would be rolling this morning.

I want to ask the Minister for Justice and Law Reform whether he will look again at the situation whereby every public march in recent years, from Love Ulster to the May Day demonstration and the demonstrations yesterday, has been hijacked by the same group of people - local thugs from around town, persons wearing Celtic jerseys, Éirigí and a motley collection of Socialist Workers Party persons. It is not good enough that young gardaí and the man who is outside the gates of Leinster House with his candles, which were broken yesterday, should be injured and hurt for the sake of exercising some vague constitutional provision to march. Why not march into the Phoenix Park and give people a place to march to? Like the constitutional right in America to bear arms, it is a constitutional right that needs revisiting, especially in current times. Lastly, I ask the Minister for Finance to stop terrorising old age pensioners and others and just make a few hard cuts in the kind of people who failed to spend the money in the Department of Education and Skills yesterday.