Appropriation Bill 2025: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-17
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Aengus Ó Snodaigh (SF), Dublin South-Central

I would welcome the debate because it is the only Vote that is specific and set apart. It does not fall under the Garda Síochána Vote, the Defence Forces Vote, as you would presume, or even the Minister for justice's Vote. It falls specifically under finance or, of late, public expenditure, which begs the question as to who stands over this expenditure. It has not increased in recent years. It is €2 million. As I said, in the bigger scheme of things, it is not a huge amount of money.
If the Minister came in here next year and increased it fivefold, there would still be no accountability for that other than at the Cabinet. Somebody would have to go to the Cabinet and explain or just say, "Sorry, hard luck, it is common not to ask questions about this", and that would be it. That is what is being asked of us here.
In the past, we did not have a security committee. When the committee was being set up in this Dáil term, the idea most people had was it would look at issues such as internal and external threats to the State, as security committees elsewhere do. In the past, it was also said this allocation was money for informers. If that was the case, it would sit with An Garda Síochána, which would have to account for and manage it. It was said it was money to obtain information, but it does not define it beyond that. I am not going to labour this point much longer, but debates in the past looked at whether it was appropriate to have a fund in times when there was no longer an emergency. There might be some logic to having one in the middle of the Civil War, from the Free State and Cumann na nGaedheal point of view, but there did not seem to be a logic to it in the years thereafter. However, those who gave out about this fund in the early 1920s embraced it thereafter, even though questions have been asked by Members on different sides of the House.
I am not opposed to this Vote. The issue I have is with the accountability end of it. If the Minister is willing, he should schedule a debate on it in committee and I will do the same. I will ask my party's representative on the Committee of Public Accounts or the public expenditure committee about this. The Minister said the Comptroller and Auditor General audits this Vote, but it does not jump out in any of the C and AG's reports. He might audit it but it is not ever accounted for and his reports go through every other detail with a fine-tooth comb. However, the Comptroller and Auditor General is unable to print any information regarding this expenditure. We have had issues before the public accounts committee involving hundreds of thousands of euro, whereas this Vote amounts to €2 million every year. There is no outrun, which used to be the case in the past, there is no return of funding and there is no demand for a Revised Estimate in the middle of the year. How come, very conveniently every year, €2 million is asked for and spent?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:29+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-17