Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I accept the Minister's good intentions but I need to see it. I am a doubting Thomas and it is our job to be a doubting Thomas. I accept the Minister's good intentions but when I do not see the legal mechanism under which he is doing it I cannot accept it. As we sit here today there is not a legal mechanism to do this. I have given the Minister the option of accepting the amendment. I will even give him the option of coming up with the mechanism one month after the legislation is passed. That is giving the Minister a couple of months to come up with the mechanism. I hope he can do that but if he cannot even accept an amendment which requires him to report to the House within a month of the legislation being passed on how he proposes to use the proceeds. Other Departments will have competing interests for the money in the next five years and will look at it enviously in an account managed by some State agency for, say, health purposes when, all of a sudden, the Minister for Health will require money for other purposes.

We need certainly on the issue. If the public was not guaranteed that a large portion of this up-front payment will go to the national children's hospital, there would be no public support for the proposal. Some people will oppose it anyway but I can say that people would be happy to support a national children's hospital, and this legislation, if they believed they were guaranteed it, but there is no guarantee other than the Minister's good intentions. I say that with no disrespect to the Minister. He may not be the Minister at the time. He may be in some other office in government. Governments come and go, and the Minister may not be the Minister who will receive this fund if there is a Cabinet reshuffle or something else happens. A commitment from a Minister regarding what he would like to do with the money does not stack up unless he backs it up by telling us precisely what will happen. I ask the Minister to accept the amendment that within one month of the passage of the Bill he will tell us how he proposes to do that.