Feargal Quinn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

If that happens, it is good. We need to know what funds are going to charities.

It is coming up to six years since the collapse in 2008, but little has been done to tackle quangos. The Minister has argued that information is available, although he might be saying it will become available. If ir was available now, we would not have Deputies in the Dáil going through the charade of asking parliamentary questions, with the answers received via e-mail. When, if ever, will the Government create a transparent source of information for taxpayers? I thank the Minister, as he has said it is on the way. It took an interviewer's question to reveal the full amount of money Irish Water was paid to get up and running - over €80 million.

Perhaps on another day the chief executive, John Tierney, would not have revealed that to the interviewer. Is that a way to do business? We should not set up a new quango with new people. I was interested to hear Senator Sheahan talk about quangos. We could simply pass legislation that requires every Department and public institution to upload documents and figures on their spending and get the public to judge. Such online programmes are cheap and they are easy to use. They are simple to change into easy to read graphs for the public. The media does that job to an extent but we must move towards the public being an effective watchdog by virtue of being given access to all that information. We could come up with such simple legislation in the Seanad which would be an amazing contribution to society. I would love to hear the Minister’s views on this later.

I would like to see more public debate on freedom at all levels of society. People are too passive when it comes to the Government making laws. Politicians make laws which very often put more restrictions on people’s lives but the Government never seems to withdraw them. I hate to see a move towards the nanny state but the Garda is used by the Government to check tax on cars rather than concentrate on areas of concern such as burglaries or violence. The Garda Síochána has strayed from its original mandate of doing preventative policing because now we are getting gardaí to be tax collectors, as such. That is one example where the public needs to have more information. I will not get into a debate on the reports on the office of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission but it is a matter that will get a lot of attention.

It is amazing to consider that the State still has 170 budget lines, and 11 independent agencies, responsible for the disbursement of the State's science programme. That is an incredible figure for a country of just 4.5 million people. One could ask whether we need such an amount of budget lines and agencies for that purpose. Perhaps one or two agencies would be enough. That is not good enough. We need much more action in the area. The Government may have effectively created a two-tier system whereby older civil servants keep their privileges and new entrants have nowhere near the same benefits. Coming from the business world I am aware that it is always very difficult if one has two people doing the same job and one is being paid a lot more or a lot less than the other. One example is that new doctors will be paid approximately 30% less than those already in the positions.