Ar dtús báire, aontaímid go léir gur institiúid an-tábhachtach é an Gailearaí Náisiúnta agus baineann muintir na tíre an-taitneamh agus tairbhe as an institiúid seo. Caithfimid é sin a chur san áireamh i gcónaí. Ach tá sé an-deacair ar fad é seo a thuiscint. Conas is féidir scanóir a cheannach agus níl aon rud socraithe roimh ré maidir le húsáid an scanóra? Níl sé sásúil in aon chor, agus tá an tAire chun athmhachnamh a dhéanamh ar an gceist go léir. Gabhaim buíochas leis an C and AG agus a fhoireann as seo. The National Gallery is a very important national institution. People from across the country derive great joy and benefit from it and it hosts many treasures but it is incomprehensible that it would have proceeded under a digitisation scheme to purchase a scanner and not have organised in advance how that scanner would be deployed in terms of a lead-lined room and so on. That is not acceptable. The Comptroller and Auditor General, it is my understanding, has unearthed this. It should be examined fully by the Committee of Public Accounts when that committee is established. It simply is not good enough. The gallery and those responsible have to answer for this. Since 1998, the National Gallery of Ireland has had an X-ray facility, a film darkroom and wet processing facilities for researching the materials and techniques of its collection. Between 2012 and 2013, the old X-ray equipment, which was housed in a lead-lined room, was decommissioned in preparation for the National Gallery's master development plan to accommodate major on-site changes and infrastructural works. The intention was always to reinstate the X-ray facility but to move to a digital solution. What happened here is that a scheme was developed, a cultural digitisation scheme. The National Gallery of Ireland purchased a digital X-ray system valued at €124,000 but it is quite clear from the annual report that it had not worked how it was going to deploy or locate it and began discussions with the Office of Public Works after the purchase, looking at suitability of locations. That is completely unacceptable. People are right to be angry about it. The Comptroller and Auditor General, as I said, had a key role in that. That said, while stories and events of this kind make people irate and very angry, we also have to take on board the fact that there have been a lot of good projects. It does not reflect the full picture of public expenditure on many worthy projects in this country. One only has to look at the number of schools, reservoirs and water works that we have built over the last number of years. There is example after example where funding has come in on budget and on time. I have listed before these school buildings, from Edmund Rice College Dublin to the Patrician Academy in Mallow and so forth. The Old Connaught-Woodbrook water supply scheme, Windmill Hill reservoir and the Kilkenny city regional water supply project are all good projects, delivered well and in the interests of people. In the justice area, Fitzgibbon Street Garda Station is providing fit-for-purpose accommodation and Walter Scott House will accommodate up to 900 Garda personnel from the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Then there area all the various roles from Castlebaldwin to Listowel.
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There is an overall feature here, but the House in general needs to focus on the specific and, more generally, on public value for money.
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No, it did not.
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I know it is.
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I should not say this. To be fair, members of the Deputy's movement have always valued art down through the years, in different ways. I appreciate her close scrutiny of the National Gallery.
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Politicians in this House cannot be responsible - I say this genuinely - for how individual agencies, such as the National Gallery or an arts centre, procure and deliver. We create boards, which are established by legislation. There are responsibilities-----
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-----on those who decide these things. That is said generally. Politically - the Deputy said let us have a debate - I remember, was it Deputy Ó Snodaigh who spent €50,000 on 200 cartridges? That showed a tremendous focus on value for money, did it not? That €50,000 worth of cartridges was expenditure in this House. Before the Deputy throws stones, she is wrong. The €120,000 is crazy. A scanner should never be bought-----
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The other point I will make-----
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-----is that today I am publishing a report.
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How much was Project Eagle? It was €7 million. Will the Deputy discuss the €7 million? No, because she will be in hot and heavy for the next inquiry, which will cost another €10 million or €15 million. There was never a debate on those issues.
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I wonder does the Deputy reflect on the absolute contradictions within her presentation. Deputy Bacik is asking me to condemn President Putin and President Trump yet in the very same presentation she is suggesting they should continue to have a freeze on Ireland's participation in peacekeeping. That is exactly the Deputy's proposition.
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It is exactly what she has said.
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The reason we have consistently said that the triple lock needs to change is that the powers on the Security Council should not be able to stop or veto Ireland's participation in a peacekeeping mission. It is absolutely nothing to do with military neutrality as is asserted time and again in this House. Nothing. It is a pragmatic and sensible decision to take. We should control the destiny of how we participate in peacekeeping. We should control those decisions in this House and by the Government of the day. We have a very honourable tradition of peacekeeping in this country. I pay tribute to members of the Defence Forces. Over the last number of years we have significantly increased pay and conditions and it was unfair of the Deputy not to acknowledge that. Over a year ago now we introduced, for example, free secondary care for every member of the Defence Forces. We have increased starting pay in the Defence Forces such that it is significantly better now than many starting pay levels of many other public servants, or indeed people in the private sector. I invite the Deputy to study that. Last year we significantly increased allowances such as doubling of the patrol duty allowance. This was a very significant move for our Naval Service. Last year for the first time since 2017 we turned a corner in having a net increase of recruitment into our Defence Forces. We need much more, of course. We have invested hugely in barracks, in accommodation, and in the naval base. We will continue to invest hugely. There will be a master plan for every barracks, for Baldonnel and for the Naval Service. We have to increase defence capability in this country. We must do it in a progressive way and in a way that makes sense in terms of procurement capacity. There is all sorts of talk about doubling this and doubling that but the bottom line is we have to do it in an organised way and - in the spirit of the moment - a value-for-money way. It is not about throwing money at the defence issue or the capability issue. Procurement takes time. We have to assess what we need and what the vulnerabilities are. Cyber security is one key area and sub-sea cables is another. We are investing in our capability and our resilience in that respect. We are facing potentially tectonic changes in the global world order. On the other hand, the European Union has resolved, and I agree with this, to continue engagement with the United States Government and Administration, which is crucial to the Europe-US relationship and to the Ireland-US relationship. I believe that President Macron's visit yesterday was a positive step in the right direction in that regard.
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I am absolutely committed and have articulated the need for a multilateral and rules-based order. The point I made yesterday was that for small open economies or states like Ireland, our ultimate security is not in optimal defence capability, it is in a rules-based order. That is our ultimate security. We support Ukraine because its territorial integrity and sovereignty were violated and the UN Charter was breached. There is no equivocation in that regard. I took the opportunity yesterday to reassert that. That General Assembly notion is just a notion. It is always Security Council resolutions that underpin peacekeeping missions. We have had significant challenges during our time on the Security Council, even in respect of keeping humanitarian corridors to north-west Syria and Tigre open. Humanitarian corridors are used to get vital aid to people in war zones. We got first-hand experience of the challenges and modern-day reality that exist when we were on the Security Council.
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I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. It is not acceptable that so many people in our society are in emergency housing accommodation, particularly children. In respect of children or families with significant medical issues, there is recourse to local authorities in the interests of prioritising the housing of such families. I do not know the background to each of the individual cases, and I did not see the programme last evening. In a situation where a child is facing open-heart surgery, there are opportunities for the relevant local authority to prioritise that case. Medical cases are prioritised by local authorities across the country. The bottom line is that we have to increase supply significantly. Banning no-fault evictions sounds great, but it would ultimately have a negative impact on rental supply and would lead to less supply. One of the challenges we have is to try to get many more people back into the rental market, either in the context of offering short-term lets or alternative forms of letting as opposed to offering secure, long-term rentals to those who are on the housing list. The Government will continue to address this issue in terms of legislation. It has to be addressed. The supply issue is key, both in terms of the private rental market but also in terms of public and social housing. Without question, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of social houses in the country over the past four years. It has been quite exponential in comparison with anything that has happened since the early 2000s or even before that. There will be a strong and continuing focus on social housing. Since July 2020, approximately 42,000 social homes have been added to the social housing stock. In quarter 3 of last year, we saw the highest level of delivery of new-build social housing since 1975. That is the key. We opened a facility in Mallow last week with the Focus Ireland housing association at which housing for 13 families was provided. These are people who came off the housing list. Some of them had been homeless. If we add in acquisitions and leasing, approximately 12,000 social homes were delivered in 2023. There are many more social houses in the pipeline, starting this year and moving into 2025. We need a consistent number of new builds of approximately 10,000 per annum to deal with the emergency housing and homeless situation to make sure the time that people spend in an emergency home is as short as possible.
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We have provided a range of measures in terms of security for renters over the past number of years. The Deputy should acknowledge that. That is not to mention bringing in the tax credit for renters as well, which is an additional help in what is a very difficult situation for renters in the context of cost and prices. The fundamental way to deal with emergency accommodation is to build a consistent level of social housing that can take people off the housing list and out of homelessness.
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That is the key. We are at levels now we have not been at for quite a long time. However, it will take a bit of time for that to have the cumulative impact we want. We will continue what we are doing through new social house builds and leasing and acquisitions. Combined, we will try get to approximately 12,000 units in 2025. This will help, particularly in the context of the housing first tenancies that, for example, many approved housing bodies operate. That is a very effective mechanism to get people out of emergency housing.
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At the outset the Deputy mentioned €800,000 spent by the Oireachtas. That is his responsibility just as much as it is anybody's on the Government side of the House.
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No, I am not.
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No, I am not. It is the Oireachtas. That is the Deputy's responsibility. What has he done about it? We created the commission for the Oireachtas. The Deputy either takes it on board or he does not. That is a matter for the Oireachtas in its entirety. It does not justify it. It was wrong but the Deputy should not try to pin everything on the Government.
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The other point is that this Government was not in government in 2017. This is a small little fact-----
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-----that has passed the Deputy by. We are now responsible for something then. I am not blaming the Government then. It is perfectly normal to say that old equipment needs to be replaced with new equipment. What is inexcusable is that those in the National Gallery at the time decided to procure this without figuring out how they were going to deploy it and what room they were going to put it in. It is unacceptable.
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That is why we have the Comptroller and Auditor General to highlight and unearth these issues. That is why the public accounts committee in this House is there. It is there to interrogate and to hold people to account in respect of unacceptable practices and behaviour. That is the bottom line. The Deputy mentioned cybersecurity attacks as if the person or the group - very often criminal organisations-----
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Sorry, I did not interrupt the Deputy. He have a great habit of interrupting-----
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I did not interrupt you. You do it all the time, of course. It is a tactic of yours which you learned from your former colleagues. It is a well worn campaigning tactic. The Deputy mentioned cybersecurity attacks as if it is the recipient of those attacks who is responsible for the expenditure. Come on; let us have some balance in the debate. I do not blame the HSE for the cyberattack. There may have been vulnerabilities and maybe we could have been stronger. I blame the Conti group who made that attack on the Irish people through a cyberattack on our entire health service in the middle of Covid. I do not blame public servants who worked extremely hard to deal with it in the interests of the Irish people for that. I do not blame the third level colleges that were vulnerable and that have been attacked by some of these criminal enterprises. I blame the criminal enterprises. I do not blame a particular university that has been attacked via cyber means. These cyberattacks are attacking the private sector, the public sector and, since Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, cyberattacks have grown exponentially across Europe. They are connected. They are a form of hybrid warfare on those countries that may disagree with the manner and nature of that attack. It is wrong-----
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-----that the Deputy should just neatly try to bundle cyberattacks and the cost of them into the broader-----
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-----legitimate issue of value for money in public expenditure, which has to be at the core of everything we do.
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I reject that entirely. By the way, I do not accept his analysis of the private sector and accountability. That is a well-worn trope in this House, but, as far as I can see, anyone who looks at the private sector-----
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-----will see that anyone who is ever in difficulty somehow gets sidelined with a huge sweetheart deal in the private sector. That seems to be the norm. The Deputy should not, therefore, try to make a false comparison between private sector accountability and public sector accountability. I have never bought into it or accepted it. What I will accept, though, is that there absolutely has to be value for money. There has to be a very vigorous and forensic analysis of all spending carried out by the State.
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That is legitimate and proper. That is why we have the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Committee of Public Accounts. That is also why we do have the checks and balances. I looked at a list of the codes of practices and various circulars that have issued to every Department and agency. They are all there. We do need better delivery and implementation by people on the ground working in various agencies in that respect.
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Either do that or abolish every single agency in the country and we certainly are not going to do that.
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That is what the Deputy is trying to say in here if we take that approach to its logical conclusion.
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That is what the Deputy is saying.
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By the way, through the Chair, I think the Oireachtas needs to reflect on itself as well.
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Behaviour in this House has cost the taxpayer a lot of money as well.
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I saw that programme last week in respect of what happened to Angela Kerins on foot of this House, which cost the taxpayer a lot of money.
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