Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

I support Deputy Shatter's amendment, which I hope the Minister of State will accept for the sake of clarity. Even if he does not, perhaps we can still use this legislation as a mechanism for getting answers from the Minister. One of her functions is to be accountable to this Chamber, which represents the people. It would tighten the legislation if Deputy Shatter's amendment were accepted.

We have difficulty obtaining answers in the House. Members of the Minister's party would be very pleased if they could be sure they could get an answer from the Minister for Health and Children whenever they table a parliamentary question. The Department of Health and Children is the only Department in respect of which most of the questions tabled therefor are not directly answered by the Minister. Instead, they are referred to the HSE. Certain questions are not answered by the Department of Transport and are transferred to the NRA and other bodies. Despite this, we generally get full answers from all Ministers with the exception of the Minister for Health and Children. This has been a problem for every elected public representative of every political hue since the legislation establishing the HSE was passed, at which time the Minister gave powers away in terms of being answerable to elected representatives.

I strongly support the restoration of the accountability function of the Minister whereby it would be made clear that she has the power and a duty to obtain the information asked for by public representatives in parliamentary questions. She probably has the power anyway but does not exercise it. She should have the power to obtain the required information and put it on the public record. In that context, I fully support Deputy Shatter's amendment. I hope the legislation extends, perhaps inadvertently, our ability to obtain answers from the Minister in any case.

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