“Minister Ahern should state whether last night’s startling and grossly insensitive response to yesterday’s events forms part of a broader Fianna Fail policy agenda, pioneered by his party’s previous leader and former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern TD who favoured cash being stored under the mattress of his bed.   

 “The Minister’s bizarre comments on the shocking kidnapping of a bank manager and his wife starkly illustrates that he has lost the plot.  He should immediately withdraw his outrageous proposal to impose a bank charge on everyone who withdraws their own hard earned cash from their own bank account.  Instead of preventing kidnappings and bank robberies, the Minister outrageously wants to impose a kidnappers tax.

 “Should the Minister persist with this bizarre policy initiative, are we to expect the following new initiatives from him in the coming weeks:

 •                A tax to be paid by every household resident when entering their home as a response  to house burglaries;

•                A tax to be paid by pedestrians each time they enter a new street in response to street muggings;

•                A tax to be paid by drivers at the commencement of every car journey as a response to car theft;

•                A tax to be paid by every customer entering a pub as a response to the risk of assault by a drunk;

•                A tax to be paid on merely entering a bank as a response to bank fraud and the catastrophic banking failures.

 “I am calling on the Minister to clarify whether he proposes to take any of the above initiatives in tackling crime!”

 “The Green Party and, in particular, loquacious and ever tweeting Senator Dan Boyle, should also clarify whether it is Green Party policy to encourage the banks to impose a charge every time a bank customer effects an ATM withdrawal and whether this forms part of the Green Party agenda of political and banking sector reform.  He should also clarify whether the Minister’s initiative forms part of the Green Party environmental policy agenda to tackle the problem of dirty money!”

 Ends

 ”News that yet another bank official and his wife have been subjected to the trauma of assault and kidnapping, is further evidence that the Minister for Justice is failing in his basic political responsibility to protect the citizens of the State.

 “Bank officials have repeatedly been targeted by ruthless criminals attempting to fund their illegal pursuits. This phenomenon is now all too commonplace and despite the introduction of additional security measures, it is clear that bank employees and their families remain highly vulnerable to attack.

 “This incident is a stark reminder of the lengths criminals will go to secure capital to advance their drug and other illegal operations. There has been a significant increase in gangland activity in Ireland in recent times with 18 gun murders having been carried out already this year.

 “Bank officials and their families are particularly vulnerable to criminal attack but it is now clear that no citizen is immune to the increasing levels of violence society is experiencing. It is a very basic and fundamental obligation of Government to ensure the security and safety of those who live in this State. It is blindingly obvious that the Government and the Minister for Justice are incapable of fulfilling this obligation.”

 Ends

 The delay by Government in bringing before the Dáil the long-promised Judicial Council Bill is inexcusable, Fine Gael Spokesman for Justice, Alan Shatter T.D. said today (Monday).

Deputy Shatter went on to say that over a decade has passed since the need for such legislation was first acknowledged and over eight years have elapsed since the Government had to withdraw the defective legislation it published in 2001.

 “It is now clear that there is no possibility that the required legislation in regard to the establishment of a Judicial Council will be enacted for at least another year.

 “Inexplicably, today’s statement by Justice Minister Dermot Ahern, publishing a Draft Scheme for a Judicial Council Bill fails to state when the final version of the Bill will be published and come before the Dáil. Nor does he commit the government to any specific enactment date. The “Scheme” for the Bill, the Minister acknowledged, must now be furnished to the Attorney General’s office and it is for that office to prepare the required Bill. It will presumably sit in the lengthy queue of important outstanding promised legislation which includes a Bill to update our sexual offences laws promised in 2006; a Bill for the use of soft information for vetting those working with children first promised in 2005 and a Bill to provide for Constitutional Referendum on Children’s Rights awaited since February of this year.

  “The Minister should clarify when the completed version of the Judicial Council Bill will be presented to the Dáil. He should also explain why the statement distributed by him to-day, which has attached to it an information “Note” for News Editors, misleadingly states that “Following consultation with the Chief Justice over a prolonged period of years, the Minister has now published the “Judicial Council Bill”, when he has only published a suggested scheme for a Bill that is not finalized. This sentence is deliberately intended to mislead both the media and the general public into believing that the enactment of this long promised legislation is imminent, a regular mid-summer trick performed by Government Ministers.

 “The inevitable period of delay before essential work is completed in the Attorney General’s office should be used constructively in the public interest.  I am asking the Chairman of the Joint Oireachtas Justice Committee to hold hearings in October into the proposed Scheme of the Bill as published so that the Committee can consider any appropriate amendments to be made to the scheme prior to actual Bill being presented to the Dáil.

 “There are a number of obvious areas to be addressed.  These include, the need to extend a power to  Oireachtas Justice Committee to approve or reject those nominated by Government as lay appointees to a Judicial Council or to the proposed  Panel of Enquiry under the scheme; the need to protect judicial independence whilst also ensuring a proper level of transparency and accountability in the public interest with regard to judicial conduct; the possible concealment under the suggested provisions of the Scheme of crucial information from members of the Oireachtas in circumstances, which warrant the moving of a constitutional resolution under Article 35 for the removal of a member of the Judiciary for misconduct and the proposed time constraint of 6 months from an alleged act of Judicial misconduct within which it is proposed a complaint must be furnished to the proposed Judicial Conduct Committee. These and other relevant issues should be urgently addressed.

 “It is not acceptable that the Minister conveys the impression that important legislation, the purpose of which is to provide accountability and transparency within the justice system is to become law shortly, when that is so obviously not the case.”

 Ends

 “This Government’s ability to waste taxpayer’s money is astounding. Over €42 million has been spent on the Thornton Hall project with almost nothing to show for it. The Thornton Hall project was started in 2005 but the tender for building it will not be put out until next year. According to the Minister it will be next year before the walls around the prison are completed and 2014 at the earliest before the first prison buildings are finished. No date has been given as to when the entire project will be finished only that it will be completed in a ‘phased approach’.

 “The type of money wasting and time delay that has characterised the Thornton Hall project from the start makes it difficult to believe any timeline this Government puts forward.

 “The Irish Prison System is overcrowded and in crisis. The Minister’s solution to overcrowding to date has been to turn on the temporary release valve with 822 prisoners being temporarily released on one weekend alone last April. That represents 16% of the entire prison population. If the Gardaí have success in securing convictions, the Minister should make sure there is somewhere to put them.

 “A recent report published by the Inspector of Prisons, Judge Michael Reilly, severely criticises the situation in Mountjoy Prison where, as of last June, there were 674 inmates, 25% above what is deemed safe for staff and prisoners. This is despite a commitment from Minister Ahern to keep numbers of inmates in Mountjoy below 600. Judge Reilly’s report also sharply criticises conditions in the prison saying they were leading to raised tensions and increased violence.

 “Following a recent court case the taxpayer is now faced with the prospect of paying compensation to convicted criminals who may sue the State because they allege that prison conditions infringe their human rights. There are already 160 outstanding such cases involving Polish prisoners pending before the European Court of Human Rights.

 “It is also deeply ironic that an extradition order involving a Polish man living in Ireland was overturned last week by the Irish Courts because the prisons in Poland are overcrowded and it was believed that the individual’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights may be infringed.   

 “There is a clear need for increased prison space to be made available. The Government’s own report yesterday stated ‘investment in detention facilities protects members of the public from theft and injury’’ (page 93). It is unacceptable that having identified the need for prison space the Minister then fails to ensure that it is built in an acceptable timeframe.”

 Ends

Fine Gael Spokesman for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Alan Shatter T.D., has stated today (Monday) that the Minister for Justice is utterly failing in his most basic duty of ensuring that ordinary people feel safe on Dublin’s streets.

“This Government has utterly failed to bring to justice the majority of those responsible for gangland shootings. This morning’s events in Fairview have significantly contributed to widespread public concern that some parts of Dublin are now subject to gun law and not the rule of law. Dublin is becoming more like 1920’s prohibition era Chicago rather than a capital city where people can feel safe and secure.

“In response to a Parliamentary Question put by Fine Gael earlier this year, the Minister for Justice revealed that of the 193 murders involving a firearm committed in Ireland between 1998 and 21st of March this year only 23 convictions had been secured up to that date. These are disturbing figures and do not inspire confidence that the Minister is capable of dealing with the current gangland crisis.

“In the last four weeks alone six people have been shot on the streets of the capital. At the current rate gangland murders are set to reach unprecedented levels in 2010.

“It is quite clear that the Minister for Justice is failing in his most basic and fundamental duty which is to ensure that the ordinary person feels safe on Dublin’s streets or when out socialising in his local public house.”

“Minister Ahern has failed to take the necessary action to end the ongoing campaign of murder and mayhem being conducted by drug gangs on the streets of Dublin.

“I deplore the fact that gangland’s lethal campaign has been allowed to continue. Innocent lives continue to be placed at risk, and the number of murderous assaults are escalating at an alarming rate.

“Fine Gael has called repeatedly for punitive measures to be taken against the drug gangs. It’s time the Minister acted tough and took back control of our streets.”

Deputy Alan Shatter:    “I will share time with Deputies Catherine Byrne and James Reilly.

I would like to start by thanking the Minister for his good wishes on taking up the position as Fine Gael Justice Spokesperson. I hope we will be able to co-operate. I hope that co-operation would extend to the Minister taking on board constructive amendments proposed by this side of the House to Bills produced by him and being willing to give support to Private Members’ Bills that we produce in the public interest to address issues that the Government either has not had the time to address or, indeed, has failed to address regardless of time but which are urgent.

I would like to start off by saying that the principle of this Bill has the full support of the Fine Gael Party. We believe that there is an absolute public duty and a necessity to bring an end to the scourge of head shops and young people being lured into using psychoactive substances, some of which have had catastrophic effects for those who have taken them. Our critique of the Government is the length of time it has taken to produce this Bill. In 2008 and 2009, my colleagues, Deputies James Reilly and Catherine Byrne, called for legislation of this type. It has taken the Government too long to produce a general Bill to give the Garda Síochána powers to effectively close down head shops and have the full panoply of our criminal law available to them to prosecute those willing to exploit young people and sell to them substances that are undeniably harmful.

In the context of the Bill, I want to say to the Minister we welcome the fact that it is now before the House and Fine Gael supports the enactment of this Bill through the Dáil before the Summer Vacation, but this Bill, with all the work that has been done on it has flaws. This Bill can be improved and Fine Gael will be tabling amendments to it. I hope the amendments we table will be dealt with constructively by the Government.

I want to illustrate just two or three of the defects in the Bill that need to be addressed. First, in the context of prohibition orders, it seems that a prohibition order may be sought by a member of the Garda Síochána in respect of a psychoactive substance for human consumption, so it has to be sought in respect of a specific identifiable psychoactive substance and the prohibition order will be to prohibit the sale of that individual substance. We have already learned by application of the Misuse of Drugs Act that these substances change and evolve, and there will be no difficulty in a prohibition order being made in respect of a particular substance and a head shop stopping selling that substance and selling alternative substances. One will get caught within the context of this Bill in the same difficulty that one has with the Misuse of Drugs Act. That particular provision should be a prohibition on the sale of any psychoactive substance. One should be able to seek it in respect of the general sale of them and not simply in relation to a specific substance.

If there is to be an application to close a head shop as a consequence of the violation of a prohibition order, again it applies to the sale of a specific substance. This is seriously flawed and the reality is that if – in our view – psychoactive substances are being sold, at the same time as an application is made to the courts to prohibit their sale without the necessity thereafter for a prosecution, the courts should have the power to close down the head shop, pure and simple. A closure order under this legislation in all circumstances is dependent either on, first, a prohibition order being made, then a prosecution being successful for failure to comply with the prohibition order, or is dependent on a criminal prosecution being taken for the sale of substances banned by the legislation.

The problem with all of that is that if this Bill is enacted and becomes law at the end of July and if criminal prosecutions are taken, the courts go on vacation for the entire month of August; the District Court is on vacation for part of September. If prosecutions are taken, it may take a number of months for them to come to fruition and what we need is a piece of legislation through this House which facilitates immediate applications being made to the courts to close head shops. That should be a practical possibility. There is no particular reason legislation cannot be drafted on that basis on the acceptance of all sides in this House that these substances are dangerous, should be taken off our streets and they should be taken off our streets with haste. The problem with this Bill, albeit well intentioned, is that the route map one has to travel to bring about a closure is too long drawn out and it gives too great a leeway for those operating these shops to continue to do so. We will be bringing forward amendments to address that issue.

What I want to say to the Minister is this: we have for many years had a problem with a broad range of drugs, be they the type of substances now sold in head shops or the substances sold by the drug gangs who are taking over the streets of Dublin and the streets of Limerick and other parts of this country. I want to say quite clearly to the Minister that what we need and have still not got in this country is a fully focused co-ordinated campaign to end the gun law on our streets and to close down not just the head shops, but the drug gangs and drug barons who are responsible for destroying the lives of so many people in this country and who are bringing death and destruction to too many communities.

The Minister’s legacy in the criminal justice area at the end of his term of office is going to be a legacy of what could best be described as gun law and the revolving door. The number of gangland killings in this State in the first six months of this year is a minimum of 12 and, indeed, there may be more. The streets of this city and other parts of the country are starting to resemble Chicago during prohibition time in the 1920s. We need not only to get the drugs off the streets, the head shops closed down, but we need to close down the drug gangs who are ravaging the community and who feel free to use firearms whenever it suits them to engage in their murderous war of attrition with each other over the patches of the community they want to reserve for themselves in the context of the sale of drugs.

Then we have the revolving door syndrome. I have a long enough memory to remember when Nora Owen was Minister in this House and Deputy John O’Donoghue used to, from the Opposition side of the House as Fianna Fáil spokesperson, make her life miserable, and he committed Fianna Fáil to zero tolerance. In the context of dealing with the drug gangs and Michael McDowell’s announcement as Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform in or about 2006 that he had finally closed them down and it was the end of their reign of terror, the reality is we have not had zero tolerance; we have had zero competence. The drug gangs are mushrooming, continue to exist, continue to terrorise communities, and this Government does not have a coherent plan to tackle the problem.

I want to pay tribute to the courageous members of the Garda Síochána who have successfully prosecuted a number of cases and put a substantial number of those engaged in drugs behind bars, but we are still not doing enough. They are still there. We had deaths on our streets within the last few days – two people gunned down who are known to have had criminal records and a young 14 year old, a victim of gun violence. This has got to stop and there has to be a coherent and a more organised approach as opposed to the fragmented approach that is taken and the sporadic involvement of the Minister in bringing forward emergency pieces of legislation.

We have had the Criminal Justice (Surveillance) Act 2009 to provide Gardaí with power to gather intelligence in the face of witness intimidation and we had the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Act 2009 rushed through the Dáil so that Gardaí could start bringing prosecutions against known gangland criminals. The result in 2010 in total, four prosecutions involving those pieces of legislation.
This is not good enough. It is not the focused approach we want. The people of this country deserve a far more coherent approach. While I welcome this legislation and the principle of it and it will be supported by the Fine Gael Party, yet again in tackling a major drug related problem it is a piece of legislation rushed into this House in the dying days of its sittings before the summer recess. While we will support its passage through the House by the end of next week it has to be improved and the gaps in it need to be addressed. I want, when this legislation goes through the Dáil and is being passed in the Seanad, the Garda Síochána to have armoury which allows it to make emergency court applications during the month of August before courts specially convened to hear their applications to bring about closure orders on every head shop in the country.”

Ends

Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills (Deputy Mary Coughlan):   I propose to take Questions Nos. 253 and 257 together.

I can confirm that the school to which the Deputy refers has made an application to my Department for large scale capital funding. The application has been assessed in accordance with the published prioritisation criteria for large scale building projects and assigned a band 2 rating. Information in respect of the current school building programme along with all assessed applications for major capital works, including the project referred to by the Deputy, is now available on my Department’s website at ww.education.ie.

The priority attaching to individual projects is determined by published prioritisation criteria, which were formulated following consultation with the Education Partners. There are four band ratings under these criteria, each of which describes the extent of accommodation required and the urgency attaching to it. Band 1 is the highest priority rating and Band 4 is the lowest. Documents explaining the band rating system are also available on my Department’s website.

The progression of all large scale building projects, including this project, from initial design stage through to construction phase will be considered in the context of my Department’s multi-annual School Building and Modernisation Programme. However, in light of current competing demands on the capital budget of the Department, it is not possible to give an indicative timeframe for the progression of the project at this time. My Department has no record of receiving correspondence from the school concerning subsidence in the main school building. On receipt of such information my Department will consider the school’s needs.

 Deputy Shatter: – “I will start by dealing with the general issues that arise under the Bill and I will then deal with the review that is to take place into the deaths of children in the care of the State.

This Bill is a monument to the total failure of the Government, through the Health Act 2004, when it created the HSE, to put in place a body that was democratically accountable and over which Ministers had a capacity to exercise any degree of oversight. It is quite extraordinary that the HSE was created as an entirely autonomous body based on a perception that it was the role of Ministers to develop policy and the role of the HSE to deliver services, and that never the twain do properly interact. What we have since the year in which the HSE was created, not just in the child care area but right across the health service, are proclamations of policies from Ministers around a broad range of areas that sounded worthy and reformist and as if things were going to get better in some shape or form. The announcements were usually made in a flurry of publicity and praise was given to Deputy Harney, the Minister for Health and Children, or the succession of Ministers of State who have occupied positions in the Department of Health and Children since the HSE was created. What the Minister and successive Ministers of State concealed from the House until the debacle over the death of children in care was that, in truth, half the time neither the Minister nor the Ministers of State had one whit of knowledge as to what was going on in the HSE. Far too many medical scandals only came to ministerial notice when the victims of medical failures went public or the broadcast or print media published or broadcast revelations of failure.

In the child care area, a broad range of issues and disasters were never brought to the Minister’s attention. Let me give one classic example. We are waiting for the results of the inquiry into what has become known as the Roscommon incest case. We know the family at the centre of that case first came to the notice of the health boards in 1989 and again in 1996, and that social and child care services were involved with the family from 1996 onwards until 2000, in which year a court case was taken to try to prevent the children from being taken into care or there being oversight by social services. In 2004, the children were finally taken into care and some years later there were horrific revelations of the brutality and sexual abuse those children suffered from both of their parents. The first time the Minister learned of any of this was in January 2008, when the mother was prosecuted.

There was reportage in the newspapers which then forced the HSE to respond and ultimately resulted in the Minister requiring that there be some sort of inquiry into what occurred.

However, if the health boards did not know in 2000, certainly from 2004 onwards it was known by them, and then by the HSE from 2005 when it was formed, that there had been an appalling systemic failure yet again of the child care service to protect those children but no one told the Minister, either the senior Minister, Deputy Harney, or the then Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan. A succession of Ministers of State with responsibility for children, including Deputy Barry Andrews, knew nothing about it until the matter was published because the body, the HSE, which the Government created, and those at managerial level within that body, felt that there was no obligation on them to inform the Government of a massive failure of that body with regard to children.

It is incredible that a body with the budget given to it by Government could have been created which had no specific legal obligations in the main statute to report to Government on major issues of concern when things went wrong. It also does not appear from that 2004 legislation that there was any specific obligation on that body to properly respond within any timescale to issues raised by Ministers, and hence the problem in which the Minister of State, Deputy Andrews found himself.

There have been misleading statements made inside and outside this House by members of Fianna Fail, from the Taoiseach down, as to why we are where we are with the issue of children who died in the care of the State. That issue was first raised in a Dáil Question in this House in February 2009, and then in March 2009 in an Adjournment Debate when the Minister of State, Deputy Moloney, quite properly replied to me based, I presume, on the information available to him. I was looking for the numbers of children who had died while in the care of the State and the Minister of State, Deputy Moloney, told me the matter was being investigated. Nothing happened. In July 2009, when everyone went on holidays, the HSE announced it had formed a group to look into the issue, and again nothing happened.

Finally, when Fine Gael published the report into the tragic death of Tracey Fay, and all hell broke loose and this issue was again raised, we were told that the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, finally asked the HSE for that information. I do not believe that because Deputy Barry Andrews, in fairness to him, is not that negligent. No doubt he sought it earlier and no doubt he found he had insurmountable difficulties in getting it and that he had a lack of co-operation from the HSE. The way the system works is Ministers do not disclose that because it makes it look as if they are not competent. The Minister of State’s difficulty derived directly from the provisions in the 2004 Act which meant when he asked for something from the HSE, he was a mere supplicant and he had no control or power over it or its failures. With the different pieces of information, we were, first, told 20 children died in the care of the State, then it became 21, then it became 23 and then it became 37 and eventually, we got to the figure of 188. The truth is the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, despite what he says, to this day is not quite sure he can rely upon these figures.

Why the review group was appointed, under Mr. Geoffrey Shannon and Ms Nora Gibbons, two good and decent competent persons, – I am sure the Minister of State will correct me if I am wrong – it was appointed when the figure had reached 23 and he did not believe the HSE, and he decided to put in place an independent group to try to ascertain the real figures. That is indicative of a system failure, not only within the HSE, a body or quango formed by the Deputy Barry Andrews’ senior Minister which, essentially, was responsible to no one, but within the Department responsible for children which, lacked sufficient powers to obtain vital information within a short period of time.

The Bill, in so far as it tries to address some of these issues, is welcome. It is a recognition of the reality of the ludicrous position in which the Government put itself and this Parliament when the legislation was enacted to create the HSE. The Government essentially removed all concept of parliamentary accountability for the running of the health services and tried to immunise Ministers from ever being held accountable to this House for anything that went wrong. It was a case of, “What I do not know cannot hurt me and, presumably, if I do not press to look for it, it still will not hurt me” until we had the scandal of not even being able to ascertain the numbers of children in the past decade who died in the care of the State.

Of course, the HSE is an obsessively secretive organisation and I suspect that part of the reason the Minister experienced difficulty in getting that information, and part of the reason some of the information I sought first in the spring of 2009 is still missing, is because if we got the full information, it would be a commentary on the gross negligence of the HSE and the utter failures of middle management within the HSE to put in place proper systems to ensure the delivery of a child care service which implemented the Child Protection Guidelines. We now know the number of children who died in the care of the State or the number of children about whom, to use HSE speak, there were “concerns” after reports that they were at risk, but what we still do not know and what the HSE states it cannot calculate is the number of children who died having been reported to be at risk in circumstances in which no action of any description was taken by the HSE, or where there was some sort of brief assessment in which the conclusion was there was no reason to have “concerns” and then a child subsequently died.

There is a considerable volume of information missing, which will not be reviewed and which, I believe, is ascertainable and may exist within the HSE but is there a line manager within the HSE who wants to publicly admit that because of his or her failure to ensure application of the Child Protection Guidelines, hundreds more children died in the past decade? Is there anyone in the HSE at the most senior level or junior level of management who wants to acknowledge that? Essentially, we still have a cover-up of the real extent to which children, reported to be at risk who the State failed, have died. We do not know the numbers.

Before dealing with the provisions of the Bill I want to say something else. On the assumption that what the Minister of State, Deputy Moloney, told the Dáil on 4 March 2009 was true, which is that the HSE was going to provide information about children who were reported to be at risk who died and children in care who died, I assume that when the HSE failed to produce that information to the Minister of State to facilitate him providing the information he had promised to this House, there was activity within the Minister of State’s office and something was done to find out what the reason for the delay was, and at the same time there was activity on other issues. The Minister of State was under pressure to publish from me. He was under pressure to publish, not only the report into the death of Tracey Fay but also the report into the death of David Foley. The Minister of State promised, at one stage, the reports would be published in October, and they were not. Then Fine Gael published the Tracey Fay report in March and, subsequently, a truncated or censured version of that report some six weeks later was published by the HSE, which published also a completely unsatisfactory report into the death of David Foley.

I felt it was of some importance to find out the extent to which the Minister pursued the HSE on these important issues of public concern and the extent to which the HSE either failed to co-operate with the Minister or obstructed the Minister, and I submitted a freedom of information request to the Minister’s office on 27 May 2010. In that request, I sought copies of all correspondence, e-mails and records of any communication exchanged in the past two years between the Office of the Minister for Children and the HSE relating to the children who had died since 1 January 2000 and either were in care or had been reported to the HSE or the former health boards as being at risk. I was seeking to gain access to correspondence of a basic nature that would have revealed no confidential details identifying individuals. Rather, it would have detailed what had been done and what difficulties the Minister of State had experienced.

On 9 June 2010, I received an extraordinary reply. I was told that I was being written to in order to be advised of the costs involved in my request. The response reads:

One such cost is that of locating and gathering together from within this Department the records you have sought. This process is called “search and retrieval” in the Act…. I have been in contact with the Child Welfare and Protection Policy Unit, who takes responsibility for looking after your request. They have given us an estimate that it will take over 50 hours to efficiently complete the “search and retrieval” work on your request. The prescribed amount chargeable for each hour is €20.95, this results in an overall fee of €1,089.40.

I was provided with a breakdown of the fee. To get the information, I was requested to pay an initial deposit of €544.70.

Were the Minister of State or his officials to focus on finding information about children who had died in care, I would expect a simple process. Either a file within the Department would contain all of the relevant communications or, were we really computerised, it would be inside a computer programme whereby it would all come out upon a button being pressed.

I want to read for the record of the House my response to the Freedom of Information Unit, sent on 15 June 2010. It reads:

I refer to your letter of 9 June 2010. It is unbelievable that the information maintenance system within the Department of Health and Children is so shambolic that officials cannot readily identify and locate the correspondence-e-mails and records requested in my Freedom of Information application of 27 May 2010.

After this, I recited what I was seeking:

Due to the importance of the subject matter it would be expected that a file would be maintained either manually or on computer which contained all of the relevant information. The charge proposed is outrageous and unacceptable. I wish to appeal your decision to impose the fee detailed in your letter.

We have heard about the incapacity of the HSE to maintain coherently information on children at risk, assessments undertaken and those awaiting assessments. Much has been stated about the new computer system that will be sanctioned by the Minister for Finance when someone finally regards this matter as a priority.

Is the Minister of State informing the House that his Department is so disorganised that information such as this, something on which I presume he has been keeping a watchful eye, cannot be retrieved easily from e-mails or correspondence between himself and the HSE seeking the number of children in care or reported to be at risk who died? Would it take 50 hours of work? Is he suggesting that, if he asked his officials about whether he could review the file, he might get it 2.5 days later after people spent 50 hours trying to find out where they put all the stuff? This is extraordinary and I ask that the information be made available. It is outrageous and I am seeking an explanation as to how it could take 50 hours to find it.

The Bill seeks to impose certain obligations on the HSE. According to it, the HSE shall:

(a) monitor and keep under review occurrences and developments concerning matters relating to its object and functions, and

(b) without delay, furnish the Minister with information regarding—

(i) any such occurrence or development that, in the opinion of the Executive, the Minister is likely to consider significant for the performance of his or her functions

It confers an obligation on the Executive to furnish that information. This applies to all of the Ministers of State and the Minister. Is it not extraordinary that, until now, there was no obligation on the HSE to inform the Minister of State of occurrences or developments in the HSE or the child care services that would be considered significant for the performance of his functions? Is this not an absolute condemnation of a structure, responsibility for the creation of which lies with this Government and its immediate predecessor? The Minister for Health and Children has tolerated this structure since 1 January 2005. A pretence is made that she knows what is going on in the Health Service when, in truth, she has no clue on a day-to-day basis. What she is told is dependent on the whim of officials in the HSE. Unfortunately for the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews, he was put in exactly the same position where child care services were concerned.

The HSE will now be obliged to inform the Minister of “any other occurrence or development that falls within a class of occurrences or developments of public interest or concern that has been specified in writing by the Minister”. We know why this provision has been included. Even with the first provision, the Minister does not trust the HSE to keep her informed. On her behalf and on behalf of all of the Ministers of State, she will need to detail in writing the class of occurrences or developments of public interest or concern about which she must be kept informed. Under the legislation, there does not seem to be an obligation to publish the information. There is a reference to the effect that the Minister may issue guidelines, but I do not know whether they and the list she must give the HSE are one and the same. When will that list be furnished to the HSE, what work, if any, has been done on it to date, will it be published and will it be laid in draft form before this House for consideration by Deputies so that it might be amended? Should the legislation not be amended so that the list would be presented as a statutory instrument to which Members of this House could have regard?

The same should apply to the guidelines. Under the Bill, the “Minister may issue guidelines in relation to the furnishing of information under subsection (1) and, if he or she does so, the Executive shall comply with those guidelines”. Will they simply go from the Minister’s office to the HSE, will they be published and will they be laid before the House? If they are inadequate, will there be any mechanism for Deputies to amend them? It does not appear as if this issue has been addressed in the Bill as published. It is one of a myriad of defects in legislation that is deeply and seriously flawed.

The Bill states the HSE must furnish information to the Minister “without delay”. What does this mean? What timeframe constitutes “without delay”? In HSE speak, “without delay” could mean five years based on the length of time it has taken to fulfil other functions following Ministerial requests. The Bill reads: “The Minister may, where he or she considers it necessary in the public interest to do so for the performance of his or her functions … require the Executive to furnish him or her with such information or documents as he or she may specify.” What is meant by “the performance of his or her functions”? I would suggest that this provision be amended to read “his or her functions, including political accountability to the Oireachtas”. The only function she has currently appears to be in the area of policy, not in the delivery of services. If something goes wrong in the delivery of service, the HSE is exempt from its obligation to furnish information and documentation. Will exchanges simply be about policy issues the HSE is considering or a policy communication from the Minister on which the HSE has a view? The woolly drafting of this legislation is another fundamental flaw in the manner in which it is being dealt with.

Section 40C(3) states: “Nothing contained in an enactment, and no rule of law, relating to the non-disclosure or confidentiality of information or documents, shall operate to prohibit the Executive from furnishing the Minister with information or documents under this Part, or render such furnishing unlawful.” This allows information to go from the HSE to the Minister in a broad range of circumstances but there is no reference to how the Minister can publish information. This is a major problem and one we have seen in the child care and medical areas.

I recognise the individual’s entitlement to privacy and to preserve confidentiality but we must balance that and make available information that, in the public interest, should be in the public domain. This issue is not adequately addressed in the Bill. The HSE can be required to provide information to a Minister and the Minister is supposed to be accountable to this House but the information given to the Minister may have to be kept secret. Information of a critical nature, relating to events in our health or child care services, can still be given while preserving confidentiality with regard to the identity of individuals affected. This has not been adequately teased out and there is no purpose in the Minister having information of public importance if the information cannot be properly communicated to the Dáil pursuant to the Minister’s constitutional duty.

I refer to the provisions with regard to inquiries, which are not confined to the review group into the deaths of children in care. These are broad provisions that allow the Minister to request information and documentation the inquiry team needs from the HSE, where an inquiry must be conducted. The HSE will be obliged to provide the information. Taking the example of the review group, I agree with the critique of the Ombudsman for Children. This is an unnecessarily circuitous route for obtaining information. If individuals are appointed to conduct an independent inquiry into a particular matter affecting our health or child care services, those individuals should determine the information and documentation they require. The HSE, or any other body involved in the delivery of services on behalf of the State, should be required to furnish the information and documentation to the individuals at their request. There is no reason for the circuitous route proposed. It is not appropriate and undermines the independence of any inquiry that might be conducted.

The most incongruous provision is listed under “use of information and documents”: “Where information or a document has been furnished under section 40B or 40C, nothing in this Part is to be taken to permit publication, in whole or in part, of the information or document if such publication would not otherwise be lawful.” The Minister of State got into all sorts of hassle with the HSE over the concept of confidentiality in carrying out family assessments and, in the case of the senior Minister, confidentiality with regard to medical issues and, in respect of children, the operation of the in camera rule in court proceedings. If a review group conducting an inquiry is to have access to information to facilitate its work, how can the group properly publish essential information if part of the information it receives is incapable of being published? We return to the lunacy of what occurred with the Monageer report, with seven recommendations blanked out and sections of the report blanked out. In the case of the report into the death of Tracey Fay, one can contrast the document laid before this House by Fine Gael and the truncated, edited, unsatisfactory document the HSE subsequently published. In no circumstances can it be suggested there is public accountability or transparency adequate to address what needed to be addressed.

I will conclude in two sentences. This is an important Bill and we need to get it right. Substantial amendments are needed. I have no difficulty taking the debate at Committee Stage tomorrow but I ask the Minister of State not to take Report Stage until next week so that we have a real, considered debate on the Bill at Committee Stage in order to give the Minister of State time to reflect on what was said, to give this House time to ensure rushed legislation is not inadequate legislation, that we have an opportunity to ensure the Bill addresses all of the issues and others I will address on Committee Stage and that the inherent flaws are tackled and resolved so that we finish with a robust item of legislation enacted in the public good.”

Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children (Deputy John Moloney):   As the Deputy’s question relates to service matters I have arranged for the question to be referred to the Health Service Executive for direct reply.