Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I second the amendment to the Order of Business proposed by Senator Darragh O'Brien and support him in the views he expressed. If there is one thing the Government has focused on, correctly in our opinion, it is jobs and job creation. It has also put forward the view that confidence is an important element of building the new economy. However, yet again the Government has decided to have a kite-flying exercise in advance of the budget, scaring the living daylights out of the vast majority of people. This is so much the case that a survey of consumer confidence published in recent days shows such confidence has gone through the floor. People are so concerned about all that is being said about the budget that they are not spending money. Where is the confidence on which the Government places so much importance? Everybody accepts there must be confidence in the economy in order to get people to spend, yet the Government is achieving the complete opposite by means of another leak, one relating in particular to that most vulnerable part of society, those in receipt of child benefit.

I would be grateful if the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, would respond to Senator Darragh O'Brien's request and attend this House. In addition, the Minister has more to answer in that, despite Government spin about saving money, the Comptroller and Auditor General's report has excoriated her Department, contrasting its lack of effort and action in recovering money that has been paid out fraudulently with the Revenue Commissioners, who managed to deliver some ¤34 billion in taxes to the Irish economy.

The Department of Social Protection has managed to leave over ¤100 million - some ¤35 million of which relates to fraud - unrecovered. There is no indication of prosecutions being pursued or action being taken to recover money which, effectively, was stolen from the State and its taxpayers. The Minister for Social Protection has a great deal to answer for, not just in respect of the kite-flying exercise in which she and her Department are engaging in respect of her plans with regard to child benefit, but also in the context of the action she proposes to take to recover money which should never have been paid out in the first instance and which her Department seems incapable of trying to recover.