Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When I spoke to the House yesterday evening, I made it very clear that I believe that what the Tánaiste did when he was Taoiseach was not best practice, was inappropriate, was the wrong way to deal with that issue and was the wrong thing to do. To be fair to the Tánaiste, he had no issue with coming before the House. He has come into the House, addressed the issue and answered questions for a quite considerable period of time. He explained in detail what happened and his motivations behind what happened. He accepted that his actions were an error of judgment and he has apologised. As far as I am concerned, the fact that he has acknowledged that it was an error of judgment and that he has apologised is important. He dealt with the issue at some length yesterday. That is important. I accept his acknowledgment of an error of judgment and his apology.

The issue is not as Deputy McDonald has portrayed it in the sense that the contract with the GPs of Ireland, all of whom are independent contractors at the end of the day, involves very significant improvements, not just to the lot of GPs but to chronic disease management for General Medical Services, GMS, patients, something all Members of this House have been pushing for. It was a significant advance in that regard. The essentials of the agreement were out there as soon as the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, published a press release stating it had reached an agreement with the HSE and the Government which included the reversal of cuts under the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest, FEMPI, Acts, the provision of €80 million for chronic disease management in the community, better value in prescription of medicines, and provision for disadvantaged communities. All of that was outlined in considerable detail in the IMO document. That is the big picture.

This was not some sort of private commercial project that would benefit a person materially or monetarily. Clearly that is not the case and that should be acknowledged.

The Deputy keeps raising the issue of whether the law has been broken. I have made my own assessment in that regard but I am not a lawyer. Equally, I have no intention of embroiling the Attorney General or anybody else. The Attorney General advises the Government with regard to its agenda. The clear agenda of the Government is to make sure we can bring society through a global pandemic that has enormous implications for people's health, lives and livelihoods. The Government wants to deal, once and for all, with climate change and the existential challenge of climate change effectively and in a transformative way. It wants to invest in housing and to deal with homelessness and the capacity of young people to afford to buy their homes and to provide a far greater degree of social housing next year and in the years thereafter. Above all, the Government wants to invest in education, ensure we keep schools open and work with school communities to do that. That is what the Government is about. It is also about transforming North-South relations through the shared island initiative. Those are the issues that I, as Taoiseach, am focused on and driving forward.

The Tánaiste came before the House yesterday. In my view, he was accountable to the House for the actions he took when he was Taoiseach of the previous Government. On the issue of documentation, yesterday I read out a letter yesterday that was copied to the Department of the Taoiseach during the time of the previous Government. It related to GMS issues and not the specific issue at hand. I asked the Secretary General of my Department to trawl through the Department and that is the one that has come through at this stage. That is it. The Department keeps all documentation. Apparently there is no great cache of documentation in the Department relating to the issue.

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