Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

If possible, I will try to share some of my time with Deputy McManus. In this very inadequate format, it is only possible to initiate this debate and the type of debate the Travers report warrants. The Taoiseach and his Government colleagues have engineered for themselves a head start and a clear run for a day or two in their attempts to manipulate public opinion on the Travers report but their distortions are becoming apparent.

The former Minister, Deputy Martin, is accountable for leaving the taxpayer with an invoice which, according to the Tánaiste, might reach €2 billion. If he knew the implications, he should resign because he is in dereliction of duty. If he did not know, given any fair reading of the Travers report, he should resign because he is incompetent. His two Ministers of State are without excuse or defence and must go.

Before he escaped from the House, the Taoiseach contrived to leave the impression that several Ministers from Brendan Corish in 1976 share responsibility for this debacle. Travers shows that this is a familiar fabrication by the Taoiseach because only former Ministers, Mr. Haughey and Deputy Martin, are implicated in the report. In fact, the Brendan Corish regulations, contrary to what the former Minister, Deputy Martin, just said, remain intact. It was the circular of 1976 issued by his officials which was wrong.

There is only one exception to the Haughey-Martin involvement and that concerns the mystery surrounding why the proposals to legislate brought forward in 1987 by the former Minister, John Boland, and approved by Government, were not proceeded with by his successor. The Boland proposals would have saved the taxpayer hundreds of millions of euro. When I raised this crucial point this morning, the Ceann Comhairle seemed to suggest that he must decline the invitation to address the House because his office must not become involved in what he called "controversy". We will have to return to that when we engage with this debate properly when the Taoiseach returns. There is no evidence in this report that former Ministers Cowen, Noonan, Howlin, Desmond and Woods were ever advised by the Department of this issue or its implications. The Taoiseach was deliberately misleading for outside effect.

The legislation to extend the medical card to everybody over 70 years of age changed all that. It is unbelievable that when enacting the 2001 Act, the former Minister, Deputy Martin, did not know what he was doing. The Travers report states: "The records made available to me indicate that the Department of Health and Children was, fairly immediately, aware of this consequence of the 2001 Act for the practice of charging in place since 1976 as described in earlier chapters of this report." The Department was fully aware, yet we are supposed to believe it never told the Minister. One must remember the report does not make a distinction, when referring to "Department", as between officials and Minister. It is crystal clear the Department knew from 2001.

Mr. Michael Kelly, the then Secretary General of the Department, claims he told the Minister twice about the matter and that, in all probability, he sent the file to the Minister and, as we know, a third party, another official, recalls seeing the file in the Minister's outer office. This would be perfectly compatible with the presence of the Minister's special adviser and policy adviser at the famous meeting of the management advisory committee, MAC, in the Gresham Hotel on 16 December 2003.

Mr. Kelly says he "can think of no reason why I would have sent it to any official in the Dept". In Civil Service, or in layman's English, when a senior civil servant says he can think of no reason he would have sent that file to any official, he means he sent it to the Minister. He goes on to say: "However, given its potential consequences, my belief is that I would have brought it to the attention of the Minister in advance of issuing the letter." The Travers report does not draw conclusions. It is a matter for this House to draw conclusions. The only plausible conclusion we can draw is that Mr. Kelly is being truthful. This would explain why the file was in the outer office of the Minister, and someone took a decision to keep it there.

Given that we got the substance of what was in that file this morning from the Tánaiste setting out the implications of this phenomenally important case, the most amazing thing about all this is that nobody ever asked whether the Attorney General ever gave advice on it. The former Minister, Deputy Martin, who was supposed to be in charge of the Department, never asked: "By the way, did the Attorney General say our arse is out the window on this?" It is completely improbable and entirely unbelievable.

It is even more bizarre that at a subsequent meeting of the MAC on 29 March chaired by Mr. Kelly, it was recorded that: "It was mentioned that the Department has sought legal advice in relation to long-stay charges issue", although no such legal advice was sought and nobody intervened to say it was not true. At the next meeting on 18 October, it was recorded "that the legal options are still being reviewed". That meeting was also chaired by Mr. Kelly. It is almost beyond belief. It was reported to the two subsequent meetings of the MAC that advice was sought. This was 18 October. What did they think the Attorney General was doing? The Travers report states "strikingly incorrect information appears to have been conveyed to the meetings by the Department". Mr. Kelly was in the chair. If he knew, he could have put it right. Did he believe the file had gone to the Attorney General? How could he have held such a belief when he knew he had not signed the letter to dispatch the file?

In the interests of fairness it is necessary to say that no amount of huffing and puffing by the Association of Higher Civil Servants can get away from the fact that this is a baleful day in the history of the Civil Service, that this is a catalogue of error almost unrivalled, and that should be recorded. However, it is simply not credible that senior civil servants did not verbally bring the implications of this matter to the attention of the Minister. It is certainly not credible that at a minimum, after the South Eastern Health Board put the Department in possession of its legal advices to the effect that these charges were illegal, that was not mentioned to the Minister. Given the scale of the implications if the South Eastern Health Board was right, that we are asked to believe that senior conscientious civil servants did not bring that to the ear of the Minister beggars belief and cannot be accepted in this House.

The Government is asking us to believe that the former Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Martin, is personally insulated from responsibility in circumstances in which his two Ministers of State were present at and participated in the discussion, where his special adviser and his policy adviser were present for the discussion concerned. It does not matter for how long the discussion went on. This was a major issue and the Minister was absent.

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