Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I met yesterday with the CEO and chief inspector of HIQA, with whom I have quarterly meetings. This issue remains on the agenda of those meetings, as it does in my engagements with the Department and the Minister. I am told that consideration is being actively given to amending the legislative provision to allow for that change, after which there would have to be a consideration of transfer of resource from Tusla to HIQA to allow the latter to undertake the inspections. The same applied when the HSE allowed HIQA to take over inspections of private nursing homes in 2009.

As to when I envisage that transfer happening, I do not have a definitive timeline. It is not within my gift. I have been very clear that we do the inspections as well as we can and we do the monitoring very well. We try to keep abreast of all the different providers to ensure the best level of safety. I have repeatedly said that it is a fundamental contradiction of governance in the most basic terms that I am statutorily responsible for providing residential care for children - I am a provider and purchaser - but for half of that system, I am the regulator. That does not make for good governance.