Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

This is too important for your intervention now, a Cheann Comhairle.

We are now informed by the Government that legislation will be necessary to transmit the same information from the HSE to the review group, set up by the Government and consisting of Ms Norah Gibbons and Mr. Geoffrey Shannon. I asked the numbers who died in the care of the State. The section of the 2000 Act clearly says the authority shall furnish to the agency, in relation to any such incidents, such information as an authority considers relevant and shall permit the agency or any other person to investigate it if necessary.

In requiring the information about the numbers who died, emergency legislation is not necessary. It is not necessary to have a review group because the National Treasury Management Agency (Amendment) Act 2000 obliges the HSE, in all its areas, to report adverse incidents to the clinical indemnity scheme. The Taoiseach should have been able to inform the House of the numbers who died, because that information would have been transmitted to the clinical indemnity scheme, by law. These powers have existed since 2000.

Either the Taoiseach did not know, and that is incompetence, or he did know, and that amounts to a cover-up. Which is it?

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