Joe O'Toole (Independent)

This issue is currently occupying all our minds. This is another great opportunity to besmear and besmirch politics. This is not a political issue. Every party has been involved in this process during the past 17 years. If there is a row between the Opposition and the Government on the current issue, that will do us no credit. Mistakes were made and I would like to know where they were made.

I admire the Tánaiste for coming out and saying that she made a statement to the Dáil last month over which she will not now stand because it was incorrect. She said she discovered that health boards, officials in her Department, sections of her Department and management of particular hospitals made decisions to carry on despite their knowledge of the fact that what they are doing was legally questionable. Many of them knew it was illegal. That is the reality of the matter.

We should not have another three-week spat about what happened over the past three months on something that has gone on for the past 17 years. I do not blame any Minister over the past 17 years for not having dealt with this issue. Mistakes were made last month in the way the legislation was brought through. It is not enough to blame the current Minister for something in which every party was involved. We should be honest about this. We should ask how and why this happened and whether it can happen again. What remediation can we put in place arising from the series of issues Senator Finucane put on the record? He is correct in the sequence of events he outlined.

We will not do ourselves any favour by focusing in on a row over this issue. It is the business of the Opposition to oppose and I respect that, but in terms of taking an objective view on this issue, such an approach will not get us anywhere. I want to know what we will do about the fact that there will be a hole in the health budget to the tune of €500 million or, as Senator Finucane said, perhaps much more. I would welcome the Tánaiste coming to this House, and she also might welcome it, to outline the position, to give us the facts, take them or leave them, and then make a judgment on this issue. Every Member who contributes could make a proposal as to what we should do next.

One of the problems with politics in Ireland at present is that everybody is ready to have a go at everybody and nobody is ready to put forward a proposal. I admired the fact that Senator Norris yesterday proposed rather than opposed something. We should seek to make a proposal in this regard. We should consider how we will deal with a payment of €500 million in this respect. There are two ways of doing that; either the Government makes a decision that the payment of this money will be a priority in terms of every shilling of extra revenue that might be collected this year or, in the event of no extra revenue accruing from taxation this year, that it will have to make a tax adjustment to ensure that the Health Service Executive is not deprived of €500 million to do what we want it to do because of this decision. I want to hear from where this €500 million will come. What will we do next to deal with this issue? Those are the real issues. I would like us to have a discussion with the Tánaiste on those issues.