Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We should do our business in the House better. The Minister of State has made a claim which he is unable to stand up in any quantitative way. While I support him in that claim, I wish we could jointly stand it up because the country has a problem with legal costs. I will raise the issue with the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, and the National Competitiveness Council which has advised the Minister of State that legal costs are a problem. We have to move public policymaking on to a higher level than is evident here. The regulatory impact assessments that were supposed to be done to provide answers to these types of questions appear to have faded away recently. I see fewer and fewer of them being published. That remark is not directed at the Minister of State.

After all the mistakes we made and are now trying to correct, a more quantified and scientific basis for policymaking is needed. Writing a provision into a Bill and then stating, as the Minister of State did, that it is impossible to estimate its costs is a step backward rather than forward. This is not an isolated case because measures are regularly presented to the House that are supposed to generate benefits on which very little work has been done. Unfortunately, we are also presented with measures which generate costs that are subsequently shown to be excessive. We need more precision and quantification.

Those who do not want public administration operating at this level are wrong. We are heavily in debt and still not balancing the books, yet we give in to every claim that savings will be made without having the purported savings quantified. This helps explain the reason we continue to borrow €1 billion per month. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure greater rigour in public policy.