Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

Monday of this week marked the third anniversary of the re-election of Fianna Fáil to Government and it has been 13 years in office. During that time the Taoiseach has served in many major ministries, including the Department of Health and Children, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Finance and now as Taoiseach. We are now in a situation where the national debt is of the order of €100 billion, there will be a deficit of €20 billion this year and, in the past few days, some children have been rejected by the State. The Fianna Fáil Party in Government set up the bureaucratic structure that is the Health Service Executive and the members of that party now describe it as a Frankenstein and a monster. This system has not delivered accuracy and clarity in respect of children dying in the care of the State. Yesterday, I asked the Taoiseach the number of children who had died in the care of the State in the past decade. The Taoiseach was not in a position to answer the question.

Just two days ago, the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children stated that in his view section 3 of the Child Care (Amendment) Act 2007 allowed for the HSE to transmit the information necessary to determine the numbers of children who died in the care of the State without any legal obstacle.

We were informed yesterday that it was not possible to give this information to a review group set up by the Government to determine the numbers who died in the care of the State in the past ten years without introducing emergency legislation. In view of the fact that he was a central figure in the Governments which set up and oversaw the bureaucracy of the HSE, will the Taoiseach indicate what happened in the past 48 hours which now requires legislation to be introduced to give accuracy to the numbers of children who have died in the care of the State? Does the Taoiseach accept that within the structure of the system set up and supervised by his party in Government something is radically wrong, whereby when children die in the care of our State the facts cannot be known in terms of the numbers involved?

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