Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I doubt if the Office of the Attorney General has permitted an inadvertent provision of that scale in the legislation. Deputy O'Sullivan said one of the Minister's functions is to be accountable. Therefore, the question must be asked whether it is necessary to include what is proposed in the amendment. By the Deputy's own admission, the text as it stands covers the fact that one of the functions of a Minister is to be accountable to the Oireachtas.

The parliamentary questions paper on any given day contains many questions on medical cards. These questions are very important to many individuals but their cases would not be matters of national significance. One wonders whether the Minister should have to deal with queries at that level in a modern democracy. While they may be legitimate, one must ask whether it should necessarily be the job of a member of the Cabinet to trawl through them. This holds true not only for the Department of Health and Children but also for the Departments of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and Social Protection. The cases I describe are not anticipated in this legislation. We are dealing with matters of significance rather than the kinds of issues covered by parliamentary questions on a daily basis. There is a good reason the Minister enabled the HSE to deal with such matters directly.

One of the major purposes of the Bill is to ensure accountability. Sections 40B and 40C will strengthen the Minister's ability to discharge her accountability function to the Oireachtas. For that reason, I am not accepting the amendment.

See this speech in context