Paudge Connolly (Cavan-Monaghan, Independent)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter. What we have is another fine mess and once again the taxpayer will be expected to foot the bill. It renders insignificant the fiasco of the electronic voting system which cost the country €60 million with the taxpayer again picking up the bill. This time the bill is €2 billion and rising. If this €2 billion had been pumped into the health service it would have solved many of our problems, particularly those in accident and emergency departments and nursing home beds for years to come.

What method of calculation will be used when the Health Service Executive pays back the money owed? Will it use the same method used when people owe money to the HSE? Between 1976 and 1987 the health boards used a compound interest rate of 7% per annum and from 1987 onwards they used 6% compound interest. To translate this into today's terms, £1 in 1976 is equivalent to €9.42 now. This is why I feel the cost could well exceed €2 billion.

What will happen to the interest on patients' savings and moneys used by the health boards in that period of time? As interest rates were very high, those amounts would have been substantial. The general answer was that money was used on patient comforts. We must have had the most comfortable patients in the world if that type of money was spent on them.

A few examples of files going missing at critical times are the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, the Barron report, the case of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital where 40 files disappeared, the Dunne inquiry, the Moriarty tribunal and the time of the sterling devaluation. We also had the missing file concerning the paedophile and we know what happened at that juncture. It is a wonderfully strange coincidence how files can go missing at vital times. Perhaps we should put tracking devices on files. The past 30 years of health administration smacks of the television comedy programme "Yes, Minister". This issue will give new meaning to that programme for many people in future.

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