Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 9:

In page 4, line 25, after "facilities" to insert "in a cost effective manner".

The Minister of State and I share much in common on this issue. Section 4(1)(f) states: "devise, administer, allocate, monitor and evaluate, schemes, grants, and other financial facilities.....". The amendment seeks the addition after "facilities" of the words "in a cost effective manner". The Minister of State will know from the reflections of an bord snip nua and the Committee of Public Accounts on this issue that this has not been the case. This is also evident from a survey carried out in Trinity College Dublin on restructuring, which has nothing to do with lecturing. In response to a question in that survey on whether restructuring had given people more time for research, one person agreed, 17 indicated no change, 102 disagreed and 86 strongly disagreed. A great deal of money is being spent on projects from which there is no result.

The addition of "in a cost effective manner" might be useful to the Minister of State in terms of his preventing the recurrence of a scheme in respect of which the number of people who thought it to be useless outweighed the number who thought it freed up more time for research. However, the Minister of State might be of the view that he already has sufficient powers to address that type of problem. There is a need for stricter monitoring in this area. That the number of people who strongly disagreed that the aforementioned restructuring was of any benefit versus the number of people who believed it was of any benefit was 188:1 is shocking.