Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

To be fair, when people talk about the Department they need to realise they are speaking about organisations such as the Adoption Board, which has 29 employees. They are not all in Hawkins House. While I accept issues were raised around the organisation and management in the Department and perspectives of staff, I believe that the management team in the Department is implementing the change recommended on foot of that report. I will send the Deputy tabular details on who is in what section of the Department. We are the second largest legislation Department in the State. There seems to be a view that because we established a single entity to deliver health services, the role of Department was diminished, and it was not.

With regard to the redundancy, I would have wished to have done it earlier; that is true. It was not possible to get agreement on the matter when the HSE was being established. It was not possible to reach agreement with the staff representatives on people being made redundant. In fact, not only was it not the view of the staff representatives, but it was the view of the political parties opposite. There was concern at the time that this was part of a great plan to fire thousands of people. That was never the plan. However, the view was taken for many reasons that one needed to establish the organisation to see its strengths and weaknesses before one began a restructuring programme. It has not been possible to get either the money or the agreement before now for this. We have now and let us make it happen, and I hope it does happen.

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