Senator Gerard Craughwell- speech from 26 Oct 2022

I rise this morning first to congratulate our Cahirlech who has been awarded the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, I'm not sure that it means he's wise but he's been awarded that by the Ukrainian President and that's quite a prestigious thing to happen so congratulations to him two issues today the we read in the journal today that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Defense are at logger heads over the continued service of a number of Sergeants who joined the Defence Forces in 1994 these valuable highly skilled highly trained people will be lost at the end of this year if deeper doesn't stop it's messing it's just unbelievable that deeper has the reach it has into every single department I'm wondering why we have ministers at all let's get rid of them all and let deeper run the entire country I've spoken about the power of the civil service and it is really becoming annoying if you want to hire a secretary now you have to ask deeper and wait for them to give their blessing it really needs to stop then I open the Irish Examiner today and I see once again my favorite organization in Ireland the Irish Coast Guard Service is about to spend 400,000 euros plus that on pens pencils bags hats t-shirts and whatever else branding can you please tell me what cost benefit analysis was put into this madness we're talking about water safety here 400,000 euros would put a massive education program in place for all water users not just those lucky enough to turn up and get a free hat and tell me will the free hat do much to save lives I don't believe it will this organization is totally out of control that it will be 100,000 euros for our search-and-resteem helicopters when the UK gets 12 bases and 18 helicopters fixed wing aircraft and drones for 1.6 billion sterling and what do we get five helicopters and top cover for over 1 billion and I believe it will be 1.3 to 1.5 billion by the time it's signed off now really and truly deeper is stopping a few sergeants being retained that are hugely valuable to the defence forces what is deeper doing about the money that has been spent by the department of transport and the irish coast guard we have the situation of the life jackets they did away with the rnli life jackets and brought in their own life jackets they were found to be dangerous and taken out of service they were found to be dangerous in 2015 and taken out of service in 2018. now something somewhere is wrong with the governance of that organization and i've been blue in the face here speaking on it and i really am getting tired of the fact that there is no corporate oversight i mentioned this here yesterday daniel o'connell's article in the examiner at the weekend spoke about the lack of oversight and the lack of control that politics has over the civil service they're out of control each one of us have a duty to try and bring this back to a country that is governed not a country that is run by faceless unelected people you