Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is following a distinguished tradition. I refer to Professor Christopher Pissarides from Cyprus and the London School of Economics. He had interesting ideas. We must send the Minister the transcript of what he said on labour market interventions. He suggested that social welfare payments should be accompanied by something other than just money. Possible options are half-time jobs or trying to slot those people into jobs to cover maternity leave. He suggested that just giving people money and leaving it to them to solve the problem will not work.

I stress those two issues because health and social welfare are the two spending Departments and we need new thinking in them. There has been a welcome in this House for the Minister, Deputy Reilly?s goal of abolishing the HSE and substituting competing health insurance companies. It is a huge task to accomplish within three years. I worry about some of the legislation that still embodies old thinking. It seems that the new health insurance legislation is designed to protect VHI rather than to promote genuine efficiencies in the health service. In the Milliman report on VHI it is outlined that a treatment takes 11.6 days in this country compared to best international practice of 3.7 days. That is ¤1,000 a night to either the health insurance companies or the Department of Health to keep people in hospital for far longer than is necessary.

Reference was made to the McLaughlin report by Senator Conway. It did show that there are too many directors of service, county managers and layers of management. There is a problem in many sectors of education as well. I refer to people being taken out of the classroom which is what they were recruited to do. Giving them managerial titles and relieving them of teaching duties is not a good idea.

We must compare all the alternatives in order to reach our targets. We must tackle the interest groups. The most scandalous example of that was the control by the banks over the economy on 30 September 2008. That is the most blatant example relative to GDP which took ¤64 billion out of this country. An interesting article was written by two retired civil servants from the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Pat Mangan and John Lumsden, on the need for a devil?s advocate or contrarian culture within Departments to challenge programmes and not to just close ranks and promote them.

Rent seeking, regulatory capture and lobbying were features of the economy that got us into the situation we have described. One of the other points mentioned by Tanzi is the complexity of a tax system and the existence of tax loopholes.

There is no major difference from the point of view of Parliament between tax evasion and tax avoidance other than that tax avoidance has a large numbers of lawyers and accountants involved. It takes vast amounts of money out of the Exchequer, distorts the efficiency of the economy because increasingly more so-called entrepreneurship is spent on tax avoidance, and undermines the public sector. If we had a simple tax system from which there were no deductions and allowances but one simply pays one's tax it would be an immense step forward.

Is there a case for integrating the means testing process into the Revenue Commissioners rather than having a myriad of agencies involved? We should try to simplify the art of taking money from people with above average incomes and give it to those on lower incomes.

The Minister's legislation on lobbying will be important, and I would not back off on it. Lobbying for any purpose is an attempt by people to get their hands on Exchequer moneys. They will always believe the causes are worthwhile but when the Exchequer is empty we have to look askance at some of that behaviour. Has too much time been spent by Irish agriculture on lobbying and not enough time paying attention to consumers? They get the chance to pay attention to consumers when the milk quotas end. The construction industry started off as a highly successful lobbyist and ended up as the producer of the most expensive houses and the most rapid house price rise one would find anywhere. It is a pity it did not concentrate on running its day to day business and leave people in the Galway tent and those in other places alone.

Could we hear from the Comptroller and Auditor General before disasters occur? Could he tip off the Minister when his research indicates that if something does not happen in an area we will have inquiries by Deputy John McGuinness and company who will try to investigate after the event? We should not wait for the disaster to occur. We should have an advance warning system, and the Minister's Department and the Comptroller and Auditor General might link up on that.

There is a huge job of reform to be done in this area and to extend Senator Byrne's Hallowe'en metaphor, the more of it, the merrier. We need this reform, and it must be fundamental. The control of lobbyists and regulatory capture is an international problem. It is a huge expense to taxpayers, and we do not have the money.