Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

On Ash Wednesday, Catholics throughout the world prepare for Lent, our season of fasting and prayer. Our ashes represent our faith, a time for penance and our mortality. Today I remind the House that Christians are still persecuted and discriminated against throughout the world. On 13 February, 70 Christians were killed in the Congo. Practising our faith is not something we should take for granted in a fast-changing world. We heard last week from Senator Mullen that Ireland needs a Department of government efficiency. I would like to reiterate this call. There is a debate in the Dáil about it this morning. Senator Mullen cited some of the more prominent examples that have been in the news lately, such as the scanner, the bike shed and so on. Some people are willing to wave these stories as one-off incidents that are being exploited for cheap tabloid headlines. The reason these stories cause such an uproar is that everybody feels they embody the systemic problem of waste which the Irish Government is. The people are angry, not because these examples are just a few bad apples but because they are most of the barrel. Ireland needs its own DOGE because Ireland has its own US Aid problem. This to say we have a problem with pouring obscene amounts of taxpayers' money into an obscure and unaccountable NGO sector to which the Irish Government outsources its policymaking. In fact, we had an Irish DOGE - Benefacts. From 2015 onwards, Benefacts ensured that the source of every cent NGOs received was accounted for, as was their destination. Then, inexplicably, in 2022 the entire operation was defunded. To this end, the Government has yet to provide a satisfactory explanation as to why it did so. While the Government claims that Benefacts was not worth the money, I struggle to find this an acceptable answer. Let us compare Benefacts to the Transgender Equality Network Ireland, TENI. For several years in a row, TENI outright failed to return completed financial accounts to the Government, eventually prompting the HSE to suspend its connection with TENI in 2022 over the severity of the issue. How did the Government respond? It increased funding to TENI the following year, giving it more than €250,000 in 2023. In respect of 2024, we do not know yet. Benefacts is gone.In the meantime, the Government has yet to create the in-house counterpart of Benefacts. I call on the Minister for Finance to give a real explanation for that. It is high time that Irish people learned what is being done with their money.