Tomorrow, the Committee of Public Accounts will return to its scrutiny of the extraordinary expenditure on IPAS accommodation last year of €1.2 billion. We return to this scrutiny on foot of a damning report carried out by the Comptroller and Auditor General who raised serious issues about governance, oversight and transparency. Contracts have been awarded to some of the largest criminals within the State. We see shelf companies being set up and established. People have become millionaires overnight on foot of this. We see contracts being renegotiated due to the failure of due diligence being carried out where fire safety certificates were not in place and where proper contracts were not in place. There have many failures by the Government in this regard. For me, one of the biggest failures of the Government has been the failure to engage with communities around the provision of IPAS accommodation. Those failures have led to huge resentment right across the State. My constituency in Wicklow is certainly no stranger to that. Way back in February 2024 the HSE responded to a request by the Department and put forward a site in Newtownmountkennedy, County Wicklow. This was River Lodge, or Trudder House, in Newtownmountkennedy. It was offered to the Department. That site had been long fought for by the community to be handed over for community purposes. Newtownmountkennedy is one of the fastest growing towns within the State where services have failed to keep up with demand, for example, for school places. There is a huge campaign for a secondary school there. There is demand for GPs, community services and amenities. These not being put in place are all serious failures. There were huge concerns about what was being proposed at that stage. Members of the community came to public representatives like me and councillors and other TDs within the constituency looking for answers as to what was being planned at Trudder House. We reached out to the community liaison person who was in place. I can only say that the community felt they were lied to on foot of their engagements. The community liaison people said that no decision had been taken with regard to Trudder House in what can only be described as a Comical Ali moment as the JCBs were on the site in Trudder House preparing the site for what was to come. The community, myself included, was being given misinformation. Engagement with the community is critical. Those concerns were not just about the failures to deliver critical services within Newtownmountkennedy. Concern was also expressed about the suitability of that site at Trudder House. It was prone to flooding. It was very rural. It was on a back road with no public lighting. There were huge issues about the site but none of that was taken on board by the Department or the officials. It seemed to be one-way information coming from the Department. Lo and behold, after €2.8 million was spent preparing the site at River Lodge it was used for tented accommodation from the March but it was then flooded out in December. The people who had been moved onto the site were moved out into alternative accommodation. Yet, up to that point €2.8 million had been spent in preparing that site. The absolute lunacy of the situation is that the site remained completely unused from December 2024 right the way through 2025, costing an additional €1.3 million, which was spent last year protecting an unused site that ultimately, the Department concluded was unsuitable for any usage, either then or into the future. Over €4 million was spent on a site in my constituency. This was needless waste. If the community engagement had taken place, and more importantly, the concerns had been listened to, €4 million may not have been wasted. The Department has now stated it does not want it, as it is unsuitable for it, and so is handing it back to the HSE but to this day, that process still has not concluded and money still is being spent on security costs to protect a vacant derelict site. Newtownmountkennedy was a flashpoint and I it started a cavalcade of protests right across the State. All of that could have been handled, and the situation as it unfolded in Newtownmountkennedy could have been prevented, if accurate information was given to the community in the first instance. If the concerns had been listened to and taken on board, it would have prevented a lot of what went on. It would have saved millions of euro if that critical piece of engagement had been listened to. That failure to consult has wasted millions. It has actually divided Newtownmountkennedy. There are some brilliant community groups there now trying to pick up the pieces and pull the community back together. Those failures, however, are on the Government. I fully support this amendment and hopefully the Minister and the Government will accept it also.

Sentiment score: -0.06