Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

It was also the responsibility of the Government. The Government parties have been in power for over 12 years. Deputy Brian Cowen was the Minister for Health in June 1997 when the new Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government was established. He remained Minister for Health from June 1997 to 26 January 2000. What did he do to implement this report? He did nothing to ensure that the Department of Health had oversight of our child care services. As Fine Gael spokesperson for health I marked him then. He was just as incompetent a Minister for Health as he proved to be a Minister for Finance and as he is today as Taoiseach. Deputy Micheál Martin replaced him from 26 January 2000 to 29 September 2004 when Deputy Harney took over. Throughout their remit child care was the central responsibility of those Ministers, until Deputy Brian Lenihan became the first Minister of State with responsibility for children in the new super office. They did not meet their responsibilities. This is a roll call of shame. They should have met their responsibilities. The speech of the Minister of State with responsibility for children is quite astonishing for the extent to which it admits the Government's incompetence, his lack of knowledge and the dysfunctional nature of our child care services. He said "far from not learning the lessons spelled out by previous reports into other tragic cases, as has been suggested, these feed into the constant development and updating of policy in this area". They may "feed" but nobody is eating. No one is changing his or her habits. There has been a plethora of reports but very little has happened. The Minister of State admits that the 1999 child care protection guidelines are not uniformly applied across the country. He says there is a knowledge deficit. We have new trendy terms, the Minister for State is engaged in a "knowledge management strategy". He hopes to put in place the information necessary to allow him to know what is going on in the child protection services at some stage this year or next.

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