The revelation that former AIB boss Eugene Sheehy walked away with a golden parachute worth almost €900,000 will leave members of the public gasping in astonishment.

Last week, the Daily Mirror reported that NAMA-bound developer Gerry Gannon had secured a €1m-a-year deal to lease storage space at the site of the old Motorola Factory in Swords to the National Museum.

The National Aquatic Centre is located at Abbotstown in my constituency and is a valued local amenity as well as an important national training centre. However it has had a controversial history and the report in a Sunday newspaper of a €1.5 million compensation payment to the under-bidder for the original contract is another chapter in a sorry history of poor administration and political failure.

Deputy Joan Burton has submitted a series of report stage amendments which would require the Minister for Finance to prepare and publicise reports on important policy areas. Chief among these are the setting cost and legacy costs of tax breaks. She has also tabled an amendment which would see so-called ‘head shops’ having to obtain and pay for licences similar to an off-licence.

Debate on the Finance Bill will continue in the Dail this coming week.

Fingal County Council are currently preparing a scheme for the provision of traffic calming measures along the Diswellstown Road.

Today’s exchequer figures finally nail the lie that the Irish economy has turned a corner towards recovery. In only the first two months of 2010, tax revenue is already down over €1bn on last year and the deficit has shot up €323m, from just under €2.1bn at end February 2009 to over €2.4bn now.

Today’s numbers will come as a hammer-blow to an increasingly shaky government.

Water shortages hit Fingal residents particularly hard during the cold snap earlier this year. Many local people were forced to queue to get water from mobile tankers as the supply was cut off to their homes.

Years of chronic under-investment in our water system means that too much water is lost through leaking pipes. It became clear earlier this year that the water supply in Fingal is only a hair’s breath away from severe shortages.

We are now approaching endgame for fianna fail's disastrous NAMA bailout. With tacit EU approval now secured, the first loans are likely to be transferred next week.

These loan transfers are irrevocable, permanently transferring super-sized risks onto irish taxpayers.

Without having nationalised the banks before transferring the loans, as labour proposed, generations of irish taxpayers could be left to pick up the tab for the botched NAMA bailout.

Deputy Joan Burton has tabled a total of 19 amendments to the 2010 Finance Bill, the Committee Stage of which is taking place in the Dáil this week.

In particular, Deputy Burton has proposed the prohibition of company’s making political donations from availing of tax reliefs introduced to facilitate the International Financial Services sector.

The suggestion by the Minister for Finance that there is no difference between a promised cash dividend of €250m due to the state from Bank of Ireland and the alternative of the receipt of ordinary shares amounting to just under 16% of the Bank, could not be further from the truth.

As they say, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.