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It is Stockholm syndrome.

In preparing for today's motion, I could not get away from the thought that if tens of thousands of children were working in any other industry in this country unpaid, unrecognised, unsupported and unprotected by the State, it would be an absolute national scandal. Yet, day after day, this is happening in homes the length and breadth of the country where young people are, as my colleagues have said, forced to fill in the gaps left by the State. They do it because they care and, in many cases, because they feel and …

I, too, thank the Independent Group-----

-----for tabling this motion. It is not appropriate that we merely have discussions on Government expenditure occasionally when an Opposition group tables a motion. This matter must concern us all the time if we as a Parliament are doing our job responsibly and effectively. There is no need for me to rehearse the various overspends on OPW and other projects that have been interrogated to death in the media and on the floor of the House in recent weeks and which have led to this motion. I know from experience and th…

That is just the preliminaries.

For what it is worth, I think Deputy Doherty’s interpretation is correct. I would also appreciate the Minister of State’s clarification on the matter raised by the Deputy. It seems to me there is a particularly broad definition captured in the amendment. If that is the case, it is very welcome. There was a very wide lacuna in the legislation that was identified quite some years ago by Deputy Doherty and others in opposition at the time. We have individually and collectively campaigned to have this lacuna addressed.…

I am happy not to move my amendment because it has been dealt with effectively by the Minister's amendment.

It is a very welcome amendment and one I considered tabling but I did not manage to do so. I have dealt with cases over the years and I have engaged with the FSPO on behalf of constituents in situations where they were joint holders of a mortgage, the relationship had broken down and there was evidence of fraud, for the want of a better description, perpetrated by one of the people who held the account, which was accepted by the bank. The relationship had broken down and the person on the other side of that relatio…

With respect, the remarks the Minister of State read out are a restatement of the position the FSPO has put into correspondence with me over the years, and with others as well. Deputy Doherty is familiar with these kinds of cases. He has worked on them too. I imagine many other Members of the House have as well. The Deputy is right that we are legislators. We make the law and it is up to the agencies of the State to enforce that law. If the political will is there, it is surely not beyond our ability to develop an …

Just to clarify, this is Committee Stage and we will also have Report Stage.

I understand. We will be dealing with other finance-related Bills over the coming months. It is not unusual for an amendment that is not directly related to the subject matter of a Bill to be accommodated. This might be done in respect of the issue that is exercising me and Deputy Doherty. Deputy O'Callaghan has also spoken about it. This is not the first time I have raised this. We have raised it time and again in the Houses and elsewhere. The Minister of State understands the issue. He gets it. He is a constituen…

Drogheda is Ireland's largest town that is yet to become a city. We do not have a driving test centre. We had a temporary driving test centre for a couple of years, located in a local football club. The RSA decided it would not renew that contract this time two years ago, leaving Drogheda without any form of driving test centre. What did it do? It blamed the local residents when an arrangement was to be made with all of the stakeholders to seek to extend that temporary accommodation to allow for the identification …

That has not been approved.

My question relates to a matter which has been raised on two separate occasions in the House this morning, that is, the impact of potential tariffs being considered by the US on Ireland and the EU's trade with the US and any assessments the Department may have undertaken at this stage on that impact. The Minister addressed the matter earlier but I have a couple of related questions in the follow-up discussion.

One of the implications of all of this that is probably less well understood is the fact that Ireland is the ninth-largest foreign direct investor in the US economy and that Irish firms are responsible for a substantial number of good jobs in the US. Of course, President Trump is nothing if not unpredictable. We were expecting some form of white smoke from the White House this week as to what any potential tariffs may look like. Obviously, Ireland is especially exposed. On that basis, obviously, much of the respons…

There is more than a grain of truth in what some colleagues said earlier but I would not put it in the way they have. There is an imbalance in the Irish economic and enterprise model and we are all aware of that, notwithstanding that we have to recognise the incredible work being done by Enterprise Ireland. I remind Deputy Tóibín to look at the Enterprise Ireland job statistics from last year. They are quite extraordinary and they compare very favourably with IDA Ireland's but there is a larger job of work to be do…

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Moran, back to the Dáil and congratulate him on his appointment. I look forward to working with the Minister of State in order to hold him to account but also to ensure progress in his Department in the context of what is an important role. There is reference in the programme for Government to ensuring that "the Office of Public Works (OPW) and its structures deliver best value for money outcomes on all projects". Will the Minister of State indicate precisely what he means by…

I thank the Minister of State. We know, and I will not recount, the different overspends around OPW projects that have been interrogated by the media, and indeed in this House, during the last period. The OPW is a very proud organisation with a long track record of achievement throughout the entirety of the history of the State. I do not want to see the OPW, its staff and the work it does to become a watchword for waste. There has been a fair degree of opportunism about various projects around these Houses, quite f…

I look forward to seeing that guidance. I assume it will be published and made available to Members of the House because it is important in respect of accountability and transparency in State organisations, and governance, more generally. This morning, and during the past 24 hours, there was a separate matter to do with the public spending code - the outrageous overspend on an IT project in the Arts Council. It is symptomatic of a wider problem across the system. I do not want to feed into any kind of anti-public s…