Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste's Minister oversees the OPW that spent €336,000 on the bike shed, €1.4 million on a security hut, and the Tánaiste cannot stand there and do a Pontius Pilate and wash his hands of it. His Ministers are all over this, the waste of public money, not just on this but the national children's hospital as well, a runaway train. The Minister for Health oversees that project. He is a Fianna Fáil Minister. I asked the Tánaiste specific questions. He did not tell the truth. The Government kept the information from the public. I asked why we were not told that there would be an additional €2 million cost on the phone pouches every single year. Why did he stand there a number of weeks ago and say this was a one-off cost? Answer that question. The Tánaiste should tell me why he never told us that there would have to be up to 100,000 of these phone pouches replaced and bought every single year? The Tánaiste should tell me why he did not tell the public that the Minister, Deputy Foley, was lobbied by an executive from Yondr, the company that makes these phone pouches. Please explain to me why the Minister, Deputy Foley, in a reply to a parliamentary question on the record of this Dáil, when I asked if she had any meeting with an executive from any of the phone companies, she said "No". It is clear, however, from the correspondence from the executive in Yondr, which starts. "Dear Norma" and hopes she is well. It reminds the Minister that she met the executive at the NAPD conference last October, which was in 2022, where the executive gave her a Yondr pouch for her to see it herself. There was extensive lobbying after that. Why is the Tánaiste not coming clean with the public? He tries to dismiss this as a non-issue. It is a serious issue of waste of public money, of a vanity project by a Fianna Fáil Minister who was extensively lobbied by an executive, who was given a pouch, and who misled this Dáil throughout the process.

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