Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Most committee members will have received an email in recent days about the public service performance report for 2022. It was published on 11 July 2023 and it claims to be a key milestone in the parliamentary budgetary cycle, providing a valuable opportunity for sectoral committees to engage constructively in a more structured calendar with parliamentary oversight of the budget process. It goes on to ask why committees should read this and it says that they should do so to ensure that appropriate parliamentary function is provided and that the Government is held to account.

We read in yesterday's The Irish Timesthat Transport for Ireland has 100 electric buses that cannot be used because it has not put in the charging points for them yet. That still has to go to planning so when will we see those buses? We will possibly see them in 2024.The Comptroller and Auditor General has reported on ineffective expenditure; for example, €99 million has been wasted or written off on the metro north project and €32 million was wasted or written off on the DART project. The estimate for the cost of metro north was €3 billion but this has escalated to €21 billion now. Some €1 billion has been paid out for search and rescue, with nothing to show for it. We will not have so much as a nut or bolt at the end of the contract. The Defence Forces are in collapse. The Reserve Defence Forces have been waiting for a reply to a letter from the Department for two months. The number of members of the Garda Reserve has fallen from 1,000 to 300. Who the hell has oversight? We are being blocked at every twist and turn. Secretaries General refuse to attend committees, do not provide information claiming it is commercially sensitive and we are wasting billions of taxpayers' euro. I wonder where we will be if we see a day that the budget gets tight and we do not have a surplus of €11 billion to play with. It is time committees were given the power they need to do the job they need to do. We are being treated like idiots in committees by the civil servants and it must stop. They must come before the committees to explain what they are doing. There must be oversight of procurement and other things they do. I ask the Leader to write to the Taoiseach to ask him how we can re-enforce the oversight role of elected Members of this House.