John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The culture that was mentioned earlier by a number of members is one that needs to be broken. I accept what Deputy O'Donovan says - it does not make any difference what Minister is there if the culture is there - but this needs to be brought to the attention of the Minister for Health so that he understands how far the HSE is willing to go to protect the very culture that has given rise to this issue. I still do not know how the 47 individuals are fixed in life, how they are being professionally supported and so on. In line with that, it is just not right that from the time this issue arose, the Waterford Intellectual Disability Association saw difficulty, at the very least, in terms of getting its funding year on year. That is wrong. The content of this letter is, in light of what the Deputy has said, extremely disturbing. We will pass it on to the Minister and to the Taoiseach, as we have all agreed, but we should make that effort to talk directly to the HSE through this committee and see if we can bring about some other focus to it in the last few days we have in this Dáil.

Deputy Costello-----