Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I do not know how people can manage to turn logic on its head to such a degree but having listened to the two speakers on the Government side, and Senator Cassidy in particular, I agree with everything they said but I thought they were making the argument in favour of the recommendation. Everything they said is an argument in favour of the recommendation. It is the reason I am supportive of the recommendation so that I would know that 40% or 60% came back and that we would see the way this operates. That is hugely important.

Senator Cassidy said we should remember that all of this money is back in the Exchequer even before the doors of the hotel, nursing home or whatever are opened. I do not want to put words in Senator Alex White's mouth but is that not the reason he has put forward this recommendation? Everybody thinks in a simplistic way in terms of money in, money out but it is not like that. The money is churning around, so to speak, and that is the importance of it.

People have asked whether this is too much pressure to put on a Department in one month. Many things become clear in these kind of discussions but I assumed, perhaps naively and incorrectly, that before Government took a decision on the tax breaks or tax changes, the Cabinet papers supporting those proposals from the Department of Finance to the other members of the Government would state exactly that for which Senator Alex White has asked. In other words, this is simply a cut and paste of the argument that has been made because if somebody tells me this has not been done already, I will be appalled.

Surely it cannot be the case that decisions are taken without making available to the Cabinet and the Department the data, the outcomes, the consequences and the plans sought in the recommendation. I cannot see how this is a difficulty. This is about open government. This is about outlining how the Government came to deal with it. There are all sorts of reasons for it.

Quite correctly, Senator Walsh made comment on the seaside resort scheme that was brought in by Deputy Kenny when he was in the then Department of Tourism and Trade 11 years ago. I recall arguing with Deputy Kenny on this matter at the time. I asked him to justify, taking an example in his own constituency, why Belmullet was not included in the seaside resort scheme as I felt it should have been. Deputy Kenny may have had a good reason, but he could not give me a reason and I could not find a reason. These matters should be self-explanatory. We need to know the decisions taken and the thinking and reasoning behind them. The point raised by Senator Norris is correct. We might disagree with the decisions but we would learn something. We would learn the basis on which the decisions were made and we could point to the fundamental errors in the reasoning that led to their making.

Is there any argument against the proposed recommendation? If I were a member of a board and somebody brought forward game-changing proposals to the way we do our business, I would insist that the back-up papers for the members of the board - in this case, the Cabinet members - be made available. I would want to know exactly the points that were made by Senator Cassidy, namely, how much, if we do this, would come back to the Exchequer and how much would churn around. We do not get that information now; we get it from certain outsiders. For instance, the argumentation for and against metro north has done precisely that. Some say it would create a certain number of jobs and that there would be a number of jobs attaching to it because of the money that would churn around once it starts. The money would go from one person to another, it would be spent in the corner shop or wherever, it would then go back into the Government coffers and come back out in salaries, grants or whatever. These are the issues we need to examine so that the people know the gains and the losses. It would also clarify whether it would be a good idea infrastructurally to have all of those hotels, houses or whatever in a small county or area. City estates have been lobbed into beautiful towns and areas, such as Courtown and Westport. That may have been the Government's plan, but I will not go into that now. I would have liked to have heard at the time whether a limit could have been put on such developments. In such situations we tended to get a time-bound limit - Senator Cassidy made a reference to that - where the Minister in the budget stated the scheme would be in play for a period, for instance, two years, but surely that was hardly the limit that was needed. The limit has to do with the number of houses, hotels, or level of infrustructure required in an area.

Nobody on either side of the House has given any case so far against this recommendation. In fact, nobody has put forward any argumentation or case as to why we should not support this recommendation. I will be strongly in support of it and I hope the Minister would see his way to conceding the point.