Michael Collins accuses government of waste, demands reform

Minister, on behalf of Independent Ireland, I am standing here to fully support this motion and to demand action, not excuses. We did not come into politics to play the insider game. Independent Ireland stands outside the cosy circle, where one party covers for the other and waste and scandal get buried under spin and PR. We came into politics to fight for the ordinary people, especially those in rural Ireland who are being bled dry by taxes and squeezed by rising costs, while government wastes money hand over fist. Let us be crystal clear, waste is not just an issue of money, it is about respect Minister. Respect for the people who get up early, work hard, pay their taxes and expect basic fairness in return. And what do they get? Printer scandals, security huts that cost more than the houses. It is a slap in the face to every hard working family. Speaking plainly, real people feel this waste every day. In West Cork and right across rural Ireland, waste means cut to rural services. It means people waiting hours for ambulances, because the money to fund proper ambulance cover has been wasted on golden contracts and vanity projects. It means elderly people afraid to turn on the heat, while the government hands out contracts for IT systems that never get used. It means farmers ask to jump through environmental hoops, while the department cannot even manage a tender process without doubling the cost. Independent Ireland was founded to stop this nonsense, to stand up for the people who follow the rules and to demand that the government follows the rules too. This is a rotten culture of no accountability. $808,000 for a printer that couldn't fit in the room. But you can get a home health visit for a housebound pensioner in West Cork. $725 million to bail out RTE, but try getting funding for a rural broadband scheme. $1.43 million for a security hut. That's the price of your family home in rural Ireland, homes in rural Ireland. The National Children's Hospital, $2.5 billion and counting. If any small builder ran a project like that, they'd be in court, not in receipt of another cheque. They'd probably be in jail, to be quite honest with you. $32 million wasted on ventilators that never worked, and then $50,000 to store them. That's waste on top of waste, Mr. $2.5 billion in medical compensation, because the health service keeps getting it wrong, but instead of fixing the system, they just budget for the payouts. $336,000 for a bike shed, and we can't get a proper rural bus routes into our communities. $300 million spent on Metro North with nothing built, and yet rural roads crumble year after a year. Electric buses left idle for 18 months, because nobody thought about the chargers. You couldn't really make some of this up. And $7 million for Arts Council IT system that has never been used. That's not just incompetence, it's completely and utterly disrespectful, Minister. Why Independent Ireland stands for reform? This isn't about the left or the right, it's about right and wrong. Independent Ireland stands for straight talk and common sense. Every sink wasted by the Government is stolen from essential services – health, housing, rural transport and support for carers and farmers and fishermen. We were founded to break the culture of cover-ups and excuses, to force real accountability and to put honest representation ahead of party loyalty. This motion is calling for a Department of Efficiency and Reform. This is exactly the kind of practical, no-nonsense measures Independent Ireland stands for. What real oversight should look like? We need independent auditors, not political appointees. We need experts from the private sector, people who actually know how to run a business, manage costs and keep projects on time and on budget. This new watchdog should have real power. The power to arrive unannounced, dig through the books and expose waste in real time. No more soft reports, no more lessons learned. If waste is found, heads should roll and the public should know exactly who is responsible. And crucially, this body must be independent of Ministers and politics. No more departments investigating themselves. The public isn't fooled by that anymore. Fixing procurement, funding the golden circle. Government in this country is a rigged game minister, a golden circle of insiders who know how to play the system. Tinders balloon from 200,000 to 500,000 and nobody bats an eyelid. Independent Ireland demands a complete reset of public procurement, with fixed price contracts, proper penalties for overruns and a ban on serial offenders getting further contracts. We need to treat public money like it is our own money, because it is transparency, real time, real numbers. Every cent of public money should be traceable online, in plain English, for everyone to see. If you can track a package from China to Cork, you should be able to track where your tax money goes. Community groups applying for 5,000 have to account for every biscuit. I am involved in 26 community groups. I know exactly the crisis and the problems they go through, and the accountability they have to put before people. So they have to come for every biscuit. But government can lose millions and nobody blinks an eyelid. That's the double standards we're here to end. Why this motion matters, it's about restoring trust, and that is the problem. It's breaking down the trust of the public out there. We ask ourselves why such a high percentage of people in this country don't vote. You know why they don't vote. They see this, and they don't see accountability, and they feel we're all dishonest, and we're all harder than one person. The Irish people don't expect miracles. They expect basic competence and honesty. When Independent Ireland was founded, we said we'd stand for accountability, respect for taxpayers and fairness for rural Ireland. This motion is all about all these three. It's about saying waste isn't just bad management, it's a breach of trust. The trust is something we have to rebuild from the ground up. Independent Ireland's message to the government. We say this. If you oppose this motion, you are defending waste. You are endorsing scandal. You are telling the people waste is fine, as long as it's not our money being wasted. But it is your money, and my money, and the money of every worker, every farmer, every carer, every pensioner and small business owner who pays their taxes in good faith to this country. If you think we in Independent Ireland will stand quietly by while you squander it, you have another thing coming. We need to stand with the people. This motion is a line in the sand. Support it and show your respect to people who have sent you here. Vote it down and it shows nothing has changed and the insider still runs the show. Independent Ireland, as we say, stands on appeal. We demand honesty, accountability and respect for taxpayers' money. Every TD in this Dáil has projects, where monies are not available for their projects, and then you pick 300 million on Metro North with nothing built. I have to ask you, Minister, how many waste water treatment plants would this have built? Myself, sorry, Councillor Daniel Sexton and myself attended an Irish Water Briefing last Thursday evening in West Cork in relation to the waste water treatment tank for Dunmanway. Sure, I could have said Shannon Veil, I could have said Goleen, I could have said Ross Carberry, I could have said Bella the Hobb, all these waiting 20, 26, 27 years for funding for waste water treatment plants. It is astonishing. But to be told that they might have to wait 20, 20, 20, 32, 33, 34, pine in the sky stuff, that will never happen. They know it now. And the people of Dunmanway are rightly angered. They cannot build one house because there is no money for a waste water treatment plant. But in the same time, there is 300 million on a Metro wasted here with no Metro on the line. There is 700 million to an Arts Council on IT and nothing for a waste water treatment plant for Dunmanway. Can you answer me in reply, Minister? What do I say to the people of Dunmanway who desperately want to develop their town and surrounds it and who want to build an autism centre with coaction and have funding got for that, but could see all these projects in jeopardy because the State has wasted hard-earned taxpayers' money and left vital projects collapse due to this waste? What would you advise me, Minister, to say to the Kenty family from Roscarbury who left RTUs a vital piece of ground to give a TV service to their community many, many years ago. Until this day, they have not received one brown scent, even that RTUs have erected several phone company masks to their own one in Roscarbury, thus making a handsome, lovely profit for themselves from the mast in another person's ground. I have raised this issue with the last-minute, who spent a number of years ducking and weaving, but not giving credible answers. And today, the Kenty family can see quite clearly why they can't get paid, because we have to keep £7 million for IT for Arts Councils, £825,000 for IV house refurbishment, £336,000 on a bike shed that could have built a lovely home for people. All this waste, with no accountability and no ahead roles, and still, the Kenty family will be left without a single cent or one bit of respect. Something stinks here, Minister, to the high heavens. This has to end, Minister, here and now. What do I say to the 30 students in the Greater Banterbury area that are looking to get a bus service to the Scull Community College, but are denied, leaving parents, driving back and forth, 45-minute journey, maybe actually an hour each way, every day. Do I tell them there is no money for this bus service that the Minister keeps denying them? When they tell me about the Children's Hospital costing £250 billion to £300 billion, running millions over budget, they will point out to me the £22 million wasted on Covid ventilators that were never used, or the £120,000 for the National Gallery Scanner. And still, all this unaccountable waste. And these people being denied a simple school bus, something's wrong somewhere, Minister, and we will be asking you to support this motion today to put the taxpayers first, the taxpayers of this country, the hard-working people of this country first. Thank you, Minister.