Gerard Craughwell (Independent)

How do I follow that wonderful piece of publicity for Fianna Fáil? My good God, it was amazing - a history lesson along with all of the compliments.

This is the first time I have addressed the Minister since he took over the Department. Slightly off the subject, as director of elections for my former good friend, Jim Gavin, I wish the Minister well as he heads out into the hustings with a very fine former member of the Defence Forces, a man I was proud to have met many times. I really do wish him well. I am sorry that the campaign got off to such a toxic start but I believe Jim, Heather and Catherine will now get down to the work.

In 2011-12, around about the time the Department was formed, it did great work. It saved this country at its worst times. I remember condemning it to hell when I was president of the Teachers Union of Ireland for having the audacity to cut the salaries of my colleagues but what was done was done to save this country and those in the Department were excellent people in a job at the time. As to whether I could say the same today, I do not think so. Secretly, I hate to tell the Minister's officials who are sitting behind him there that departmental people say to me it is all the fault of the Department of public expenditure and that it is the animal in the room that will allow them do nothing. Therefore, let us talk about value for money, which is one of the roles the Department has.

Let us talk about the search and rescue contract that was awarded to Bristow. It was supposed to be up and running in July of this year. Everybody said - I said it for months before the contract was awarded - that it could not possibly deliver on the promise it was giving. It is an €800 million contract and we all know it will probably go to €1 billion or €1.5 billion by the time the ten years is up. The oversight of that contract is now a matter that will go before the Committee of Public Accounts and I sincerely hope we will get to the bottom of some of the shenanigans that took place. The Minister's officials cannot be on top of all of these issues. I am merely pointing out that when it comes to governance, the Minister would not have enough staff if he had 1,000 staff to keep an eye on what is going on.

With the same group, the Irish Coast Guard, there was a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General about the purchase of vehicles. The report condemns the fact that €18 million was spent on buying vehicles. Let me put it this way. They had a particular vehicle. I will not put a name on the vehicle or anything else. The vehicle was found to be unsuitable for the work of the Coast Guard. A case was made, I am sure, to the Department of public expenditure, to replace the vehicles. The vehicles were replaced with exactly the same vehicle. They got rid of a vehicle and they purchased exactly the same one. If it was not good enough to do the job the first time around, how the hell did they buy it the second time? The Minister cannot be on top of that. I am pointing this out from the point of view of how difficult it is for the Department of public expenditure and reform to have its finger on every pulse in the country. We have to trust individual Departments to do the job that they are entrusted to do. I brought these issues up. Over the past four years, I spoke in this House more often than I care to remember about the runaway lack of governance in the Department of Transport, particularly in relation to the Irish Coast Guard. Nothing has changed.

I firmly believe we should have Deputy Chambers in finance, give him the two Departments and get it back to where it was. I am not so sure I would agree with my colleague that the Deputy should be there for life, but we would give him a couple of years anyway. That would be my view on it.

Seriously, if we look at legal actions taken by citizens of this State dating back way before the Minister's time and, indeed, my time, there are examples of the State legal teams fighting legal cases that are unwinnable to the last moment. There are cases that we can draw back on where final settlements were made on the death bed of people who took the actions. We need to look at how all of that fits into corporate governance. I know the State is obliged to defend and look after the resources and money of the State and must defend any action that is brought against it but, surely to God, when they know it is an action that it will fail, they should stop and say, "No more. We will not fund something that has no chance of winning. We will go and settle it and solve whatever problem is there." That is the sort of Cabinet discussion that has to be had, where we sit down and we look at it.

In fairness, on the money that the Minister has allocated to defence, I have been looking at what has happened, particularly in Haulbowline in Cork where a tremendous transformation has taken place.On the money that is being paid to our Defence Forces personnel, a 3-star private now starts on about €6,000 a year more than a teacher. That is really amazing. It is great stuff.

The Tánaiste announced about three weeks ago that he went to the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation looking for €3.7 billion to modernise and increase the Defence Forces and he was delighted that he got €1.7 billion. I was brought up in a country where if the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste said they were going to do something, no Minister would have the audacity to say "No". They would simply say, "Get the cheque book out there. The Minister wants €3.7 billion. Where do I sign?" I had this argument with one of my family the other day. I said, "What a hard neck. The Tánaiste made a statement and DPER said no." My family member turned around and said to me: "Hang on a minute now. You're telling me DPER is there to mind the purse strings of the State, and on the other hand you say the Tánaiste can spend whatever the hell he wants." I am sure what actually happened is that he was told, "You can have the €3.7 billion for defence, but if you get that, we are taking €1 billion out of health and another €1 billion out of somewhere else." Perhaps that is what happened.

We need a little bit more honesty about what goes on in the Department. When we joined the EEC, which later became the EU, it was government practice and political practice to blame Europe for everything. "It is not our fault; it is Europe's fault. We did not do it; Europe did it." The current mantra throughout the country when we talk about public services - even hiring a secretary; it does not matter - is that, "We would do it. We have no problem doing it, but it is DPER. DPER has our hands tied." Departments need to be a little bit more honest with us. If they are looking for specific funding for something and the funding is not available, they have to explain why the business case they brought to the Department of public expenditure and reform failed. Why was the Department able to turn around and say, "We cannot fund that"?

In fairness to the Department - my former union members will probably kill me for complimenting the Department on anything - but if the Department of public expenditure and reform is to stay and we are to remain with the two Departments – the Department of Finance and the Department of public expenditure – then the Department of public expenditure should not have to explain itself as to why projects or business cases did not survive. What should happen is that the Department whose business case was rejected needs to understand why it was rejected and then to be honest enough and tell the public that when it put forward a particular set of proposals it was not accepted, and lay out the reason it was not accepted. It is not good enough to have one demon in the room and to blame that demon for everything. If I want-----