Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

That is the prepared script and Members have heard it all before. The question I asked the Taoiseach was whether he is prepared to proclaim public confidence in the management capacity of the HSE to deliver results, for which they are paid, in respect of patients. He did not answer that question. He spoke of people who were under serious pressure, including front-line staff such as nurses and those working in wards and accident and emergency departments, who are under pressure on a daily basis as inadequate facilities prevent them from doing the job for which they are trained. However, I remind the Taoiseach that when Professor Brendan Drumm spoke to the Fine Gael parliamentary party in Portlaoise a number of years ago, his first point was that his organisation, which has more than 130,000 employees, had 2,500 employees on its payroll who did not know what was their job or where they fitted into the system but who would be paid for life. This is part of the administrative bureaucratic monster the Government and the Minister for Health and Children, who is absent, have created in Ireland.

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