Senator Gerard Craughwell- speech from 25 May 2022
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Transcript
First and foremost I would like to join with my colleague Senator Wall and I am sure you are a self-acting leader in welcoming the accession of Pt4a to ICTU. However, I believe it is outrageous that RACO have not been granted the same permission and I would call today for the Minister to immediately address that. There are pay talks going on right now and they need to be there. There has been a lot of talk recently about mental health for children and mental health issues for children and one wonders about the way business is done in this country. I brought this report to this House last week, 415 pages from the Irish Air Corps on their pitch to take part of the search and rescue, resulting in 378,661,302 euro saving to the exchange. I guarantee you no minister has read this or has been asked to read it. Furthermore, the critique of that is three pages. There is not one technological, empirical or statistical piece of evidence to support this piece of nonsense. The Secretary General was invited to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on a number of occasions to discuss this process and has refused to come. Now, if the departments are not answerable to the Oireachtas and the ministers appear not to be in control of their departments, where the hell do we go? This is outrageous. There is no way to question this process. This process is banging ahead like a steam engine. Almost 400 million of a savings over 10 years and nobody will explain why it's not happening. We talk about the pride we have in the Defence Forces in this House all the time. There is no pride in the Defence Forces. This weekend, an RAF aircraft was called in to do top cover without the knowledge of the Irish Air Corps. Without the knowledge of the Irish Air Corps. I'm told it was RAF, but it was English, that's for sure. This fits neatly into the desire of the Coast Guard to have top cover provided by somebody for the next three years and not the Irish Air Corps. Now, who is running this state? Is it faceless civil servants who are so goddamn powerful at this stage that they're answerable to nobody, not even the houses of the Oireachtas? To compel somebody to come, a Secretary General to come to an Oireachtas Committee, you need the CPPs from both houses to agree. And that is just way, way, way, way too cumbersome as far as I'm concerned. This is an outrage. The tender, I understand, is going out today. And that's going out in contempt of this House, the lower House and the Joint Oireachtas Committee. And that's simply not good enough. Thank you.