James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

This morning on the Order of Business, the Minister for Transport mentioned that ten children had died from natural causes but this afternoon, the Minister of State told us there were nine. I find it difficult to accept the Minister of State could not provide us with a statement, given all the back-up he has in the Department. It would only have been a matter of photocopying his notes.

A number of other issues must be considered. Surely the lack of psychiatric services for children has an important bearing on what is happening as must the lack of social workers, which was alluded to this morning. We do not have the number of them recommended in some of the reports. Ballydowd was referred to and it is an interesting case as of the ten issues raised about the facility nine related to management yet the solution was to move the children and the management to a new location. Will the Minister of State comment on this?

How long does the Minister of State believe is reasonable to allow for due process? A child died in 2002 and eight years later we are still waiting for a report. By anyone's measurement that is totally unacceptable. Will the Minister of State put in place a timeline for all future reports to be delivered to the House? We cannot have these interminable delays; they give the impression of a cover-up, like it or not. I accept that nobody in the House would wilfully cause harm to children or want to see negligence causing harm to children. Of the nine cases we are told died from medical causes, brain tumours and other conditions were mentioned. Were any deaths caused by septicemia, pneumonia or complications in pregnancy?

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