Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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In respect of dealing with the fair deal scheme which involves €1.6 billion in spending, the correspondent raises an issue against the ratios, private to public, and we need to examine that. However, what I am raising here is something quite distinct, discreet and specific. We have here not so much wider questions around the fair deal scheme. These are direct questions around the governance of HIQA, its interactions with the NTPF, the role of the chairman of the board of HIQA, the management or otherwise of conflicts of interests, and a specific meeting that happened at a specific time, the minutes of which are now in our possessions and raise alarming questions in terms of oversight, in terms of roles and in terms of the management of this scenario. I suggest that we have the HIQA executives return to us because we need to go back over that ground around conflicts of interest, around the role of the board and around the fact that, as the Chairman quite correctly states, it is not a body that sets or regulates fees or charges. We need the chairman of the board here to assist us in examining those and we need an account from the chairman of the board of that meeting, why he was at that meeting, what happened at that meeting, etc. We also need Mr. Tadhg Daly from Nursing Homes Ireland because he was the convenor of the meeting in question.

I take the Chairman's point that it would be helpful for this specific investigation to have the NTPF present as well but I am not suggesting, although we need to do it, the wider investigation of fair deal. This is a specific matter. This is an account of a specific meeting, that is to say the least alarming and that raises the most fundamental questions around accountability and governance and people's roles and limitations. That is what I ask an examination of on Thursday next.