Sean Barrett (Independent)

I welcome the Minister. When he spoke about fellows who dropped the ball, the phrase occurred to me was to be careful what you ask for because you might get it. If one was afraid of the fellow in one corner-back position, there was an even tougher fellow over in the other corner and one could end up in a worse state.

The Minister referred to what went on in the years in which the money was all spent. I refer to an bord snip nua. I previously used the proper English language title which nobody uses any more. I will claim a grant from the Arts Council for that. An bord snip nua tells us that between 1997 and 2009, the number of higher grade civil servants rose by 82% in numbers compared with 27% on average. That is what happened. A massive bureaucracy grew up during the period. I refer to page 12 of volume one of the report of an bord snip nua. The pay level due to benchmarking at those top levels meant that we ended up with senior civil servants and Governors of the Central Bank being paid far more than their international comparators, including the former Taoiseach because his pay was linked to that of higher civil servants. Builders, bureaucrats and bankers are the ones who got us into this mess. Whether Senator Mac Conghail can run a matinee on a Wednesday in October is not going to solve those problems and we must face up to them.

In the Book of Estimates for the current year I note that the programme expenditure was down by 9%. That is correct. We are in difficulty. Everyone must participate in the solution. However, the administration budget only reduced by 2%. The total budget went down by 9% and administration went down by 2%, but most of the items in the administration budget went up. My unweighted average for the five of them is that they increased by 63%. A total of 23% more was spent on travel and subsistence, training and development expenses increased by 67%, postal and telecoms increased by 10%, offices expenses increased by 26%, and policy reviews and value for money increased by 14%.