Yesterday, I offered the Taoiseach my good wishes for the success of the Irish Presidency and I repeat that now.

Is the Taoiseach satisfied with the explosion in the cost of consultants employed by Government, as revealed in the figures recently secured by my colleague, Deputy Gilmore? These show the almost casual incidence of resort to consultants by Government, rising to a cost of more than €100 million in the years 2000-02. That is without including the three big Departments of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Health and Children and Transport. This €100 million is taxpayers' money. It works out at more than €100,000 per day for the employment of consultants and shows an exponential rise over the years. The cost was €22 million in 2000 and almost twice that, €42 million, in 2002. This exponential pattern of increase is evident in most Departments. For example, the cost in the Department of Social and Family Affairs was €22 million, in a Department which seeks to pare €58 million off services to the weakest sections in our society.

Is the Taoiseach satisfied there is not an overly cavalier resort to the use of consultants and that this is not seen as a honey pot where application for contracts is not impeded by close affiliation to Fianna Fáil, as we have seen in a number of instances? Four years ago the Comptroller and Auditor General did a value for money audit of the resort to consultancies by Government, and expressed a number of concerns about the guidelines which ought to apply, not just to the tendering process and recruitment, but to the matters on which consultants are brought into various Departments.

Deputy Rabbitte asks if I agree that the figure for the last number of years is quite high. The figure is high and it has grown, like most areas of public expenditure. The Deputy asked if this was necessary in all cases. Without examining every case, there has been increasing recourse in the public service in the past ten or 15 years to seek outside advice on policy decisions and to have some expert examination undertaken by international consultants and domestic firms. The record of who has received this money is available.

Deputy Rabbitte mentioned the Department of Social and Family Affairs. This was spent on the service delivery model for the information technology programme to improve the ability of the Department to pay individuals. In many other Departments consultants have been concerned with information technology. In other cases consultancies have been used as part of the modernisation agenda and are partly concerned with human resources. Ecological and environmental reports are made in cases of infrastructure. An aviation report on Dublin Airport was done by international aviation consultants. Many of these are costly.

Which one?

There have been several.

The Government kept rejecting—

Deputy Ryan, this is Leaders' Questions.

Perhaps Deputy Ryan would like Ministers to make decisions without taking account of any advice from international experts.

That is what Minister for Finance did.

He did not. Many of these reports are necessary. They are made by considered professional experts who give their assessments before the Government makes decisions which involve expenditure of several billions. That is a recurring figure. The analyses in many reports lead on to expenditure of billions of euro in the years ahead.

And underestimating social welfare requirements.

If they were not done the House would be critical of public servants for not analysing the position in advance, which is the correct thing to do.

The Minister could not count how many children are in the country.

Deputy Gilmore has given me a letter which the Minister for Transport kindly sent to him because his is one of the Departments not included in the figures. It shows that the number of different consultancies in his Department increased from 48 in 2000 to 136 in 2002. The Taoiseach appears to be saying that this is concerned with expenditure of hundreds of millions of euro. That is true, but have we built more roads more quickly and more cheaply? Has Luas come in earlier and on cost as a result of these consultants? One would need to reflect on the use of 136 consultants in the Department of Transport.

I would have thought the Government is particularly well armed with public relations consultants. They crowd around every Minister, yet we see PR consultancies brought in. There is no difficulty in doing that yet we make cuts in social welfare. Is the Taoiseach saying the expertise is no longer retained in the Civil Service to do some of the work that would have been regarded as normal routine work in the past? People would be shocked to learn that, apart from the three big Departments, €100 million has been spent on consultants, or more than €100,000 per day.

The Minister for Transport has advised me that he has been involved in four consultants' reports.

The Taoiseach should not blame the former Minister. That is not fair to Senator O'Rourke.

Deputy Rabbitte, please allow the Taoiseach the same courtesy which was afforded to you.

When Senator O'Rourke was Minister she commissioned a large number of consultants' reports on rail safety. In this House I always pointed out that I was happy to put money into rail safety and we used professional outside consultants. We do not have experts on rail safety in the public service, nor do we have them on ecological or archaeological services.

The Government had an archaeological service.

Such expertise was needed in the large contract in Carrickmines.

What about the cuts?

We do not have expertise on international aviation, rail safety and other matters. Some people think people are overpaid in the public service. We do not have international experts who receive millions of euro who are capable of doing this work.

Deputy Rabbitte asked if we are wasting money and if consultancy is growing too much. We should not use outside consultants if they are not necessary. We rarely use public relations consultants. A small number of the contracts are in that area. Most reports are technical and are made by technical experts.

Were they consulted about the war?

We should only use this money where required. It has improved roads and other matters. A total of 30 major road projects have been completed, involving almost 230 kilometres of road. There are a further 16 schemes and consultants are involved on some aspects of them.

On the Red Cow roundabout?

The Taoiseach wants to get his money back.

The Deputy was against the very good report issued by the consultants.

Where are the consultants? Are they on the Red Cow roundabout?

We have had a further 16 schemes of construction involving 173 kilometres of roads, of which 155 kilometres are motorway.

Millimetres.

The answer to Deputy Rabbitte's question is "Yes". Almost 400 extra kilometres of road have been constructed in recent years and consultants have helped considerably in that also.