Michael Mullins (Fine Gael)

I support Senator Darragh O'Brien's comments on bonus payments. We had a positive day yesterday on many fronts. The performance by the Minister, Deputy Brendan Howlin, gave us all confidence that we are on our way towards addressing many significant issues as to how we do business in the Oireachtas and make significant savings. As the Senator who raised the abuse of the telephone system here on Tuesday morning, I am particularly pleased that the Deputy who was the beneficiary of those 3,500 calls saw sense yesterday and decided to refund the cost of them to the Oireachtas. I hope the matter does not end there, though. I urge the Leader to ensure that the Committee on Procedure and Privileges investigates this matter fully. We all want to see a system put in place whereby similar abuse cannot occur in future. The Oireachtas phone system should be configured in such a way that premium-line calls cannot be made from phones within Leinster House.

In recent weeks, we all received copies of the report of the Tribunal of Inquiry into Payments to Politicians and Related Matters. We got three large volumes of documentation, each of which costs €50 to purchase. That amounts to €150 per Member of the Oireachtas or a total of almost €34,000. There must be a better way of doing this. Significant cost savings could have been made by issuing the report electronically or making it available for access in the Oireachtas Library. I am not sure that every Member needed to have a copy or that everybody will read it. There are significant savings to be made everywhere we look within the Oireachtas system. I urge the Leader to take that point on board in future.