I am obliged to you and your office for giving me the opportunity to raise this matter on the Adjournment. It arises as a result of the reply I received to parliamentary questions I tabled yesterday seeking details of the bills for consultants which this Minister has engaged, since coming to office ten months ago. It is a matter of public concern that in excess of £1 million in consultancy fees has been paid out by the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry and three State bodies under his control. In his reply to a recent parliamentary question which elicited this information, the Minister had no problem in giving me full details of the names of the various consultants and consultancy firms who had been given work by these firms and by his Department, but when I asked for a breakdown of the overall figure for the individual consultancies the Minister was uncharacteristically coy, despite the fact that to the best of my knowledge all the State bodies concerned have issued that information to him. Obviously the Minister sought that information on foot of my initial parliamentary question. Why is a Member, on behalf of the public, denied access to legitimate information when the Minister was prepared to give me the overall information in reply to a previous question?
In his reply to this matter in the Irish Independent on 16 October, when I raised the scandalous waste of tax-payers' money, the Minister explained that the bulk of the fees of £325,000 in his Department went on consultants who had been brought in to advise on the introduction of a new computer system to speed up the payment of £750 million in headage and other cash payments to farmers which had been negotiated by his predecessor, Deputy Walsh. The computerisation programme in Portlaoise was well under way long before the Minister arrived. He continues to give the impression that nothing had happened in the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry until he arrived in December, 1994.
That information is seriously incorrect. I call on the Minister of State, on behalf of the Minister, to withdraw the explanation which was given by the Minister claiming that the bulk of his consultancy fees is in respect of the introduction of a new computer system. The Minister's woefully incomplete answer has flatly contradicted his previous public explanation for the £325,000 spent in his Department. He has refused to account for the £680,966 spent by the bodies under his control. This refusal is in spite of the fact that the bodies in question have provided the Minister with the detailed information necessary for him to answer the questions asked.
When challenged on this scandalous expenditure last week, he asserted that the bulk of it related to computerisation. The Minister's partial and selective answer showed this to be untrue. In fact, less than one-fifth, or £62,186, was spent on computerisation. It has now also emerged from the inquiries I have made that £34,220 has been marked for public relations advice to the Minister. In addition to a full-time staff of four in the Department's information section, this Minister is spending £3,000 per month on hired spin doctors — a matter in which I am sure the public is interested. The public has a right to know what spin on what stories he considers too sensitive for his civil servants to handle.
The time is long past when talk was cheap. The Minister is withholding information which the public has a right to know. I thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for allowing me to raise this matter on the Adjournment to give the Minister of State the opportunity to give us that information which the public has a right to know and which I am sure he will give me in his reply.
Fianna Fáil demands an immediate and full disclosure of all the facts surrounding Minister Yates's £1 million spending spree on public relations advisers. If we are to have Government that is as clear as a pane of glass, it must be glass we can see through, not Venetian glass. I am sure the Minister of State, Deputy Deenihan, will confirm that he is prepared to withdraw the inaccurate information regarding his own Department's expenditure and give the information which not only I but the taxpayers are entitled to have in respect of the scandalous amount of money being spent on consultancies while hundreds of staff are permanently employed in these bodies for the purpose of serving the public.
