Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Last week the Taoiseach told me that there were a total of 22 staff working for him in his constituency and private offices. These include a deputy secretary, an assistant secretary, a principal officer and so forth. There are 18 staff in the Taoiseach's private office and four in his constituency office. I do not know if the total of 22 includes staff working out in the constituency. How many of the 22 staff are political?

In terms of the structure and management of his Department, the Taoiseach has been in office for a reasonable amount of time now. A headline in the Independentnewspaper this morning reads "Families 'devastated' as surgery target for children with scoliosis shelved". This is something that the Taoiseach and I discussed when we were both Ministers. When I was Tánaiste and he was a Minister, I secured, with his full support, the funding for the new operating theatre in Crumlin. There are 22 people in his office at the level of deputy secretary, assistant secretary, principal officer, assistant principal officer, higher executive officer and executive officer. How, in that context and in terms of the approach to this very important strategic issue, can we be told through the newspapers this morning of the distress of the parents and families of 210 children, whose target deadline for surgery was confirmed by the Taoiseach and by the Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, to me and other Deputies not too long ago, appears to have been abandoned? This also includes children referred to by the Government in this House who would be facilitated to go abroad, mainly to the UK, to have their desperately needed operations done. I cannot understand what is going on in the Taoiseach's office. I know he is busy and this is a relatively small item in the overall scheme of things but it is desperately important to the people involved.

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