Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)

I will finish with this question. Does the Minister of State agree that the HSE is the only quango about which one can ask a question, even though it might take six months to get the answer? When we had health boards, questions had to be answered within three days. Fellows in charge of the health service are paid millions of euro in wages and they cannot answer a question for six months, if they feel like it, or officials might ring one up and give one a bit of hot tongue for asking the question in the first place.

I was criticised by the Minister of State for making this a red line issue but we need to return power to the House in order that we can give it back to the people. Powers must be taken back from the quangos. There are 1,000 of them. They all have chief executive officers, chairman, boards and spin doctors to tell us the great job they are doing and we want to take the power back from them, county managers and the whole lot of them and put it back into the House.

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