Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

They have clear responsibilities as laid down in the instruments by which they are appointed and they are given clear delineated functions. This has increased in recent years in terms of giving specific functions and specific policy areas to Ministers of State. Generally one tends to let Ministers get on with their job. One does not interfere regularly in their sphere of activities. There may be an overlap in some areas of the Department of Health and Children, or any other Department for that matter.

I did not have discussions with them about the minutes in the aftermath of the meeting. I have already said that immediately after the meeting there was another meeting in the Gresham Hotel in connection with the Hanly report. This may explain why there was no discussion about the main meeting. I went straight into another meeting, on the margins of the room, with the chief executive of the health board and officials of the Department to discuss the Hanly report, which was a fairly hot topic at the time. The item under discussion was the composition of the implementation board in the mid-west.

I cannot recollect whether I read the draft minutes because they would normally have gone to the next MAC meeting. At that stage, most people would have expected that the operational decisions, or other decisions made at the meeting, would have been followed on and moved on to the Attorney General's office. Some 13 items were included, six of which were for brief mention only, including this item. From what I learned subsequently, the discussion was of approximately ten minutes duration. This does not suggest that the issue raised the kind of alarm bells that were on the radar screen to the extent that people are trying to suggest with hindsight.

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