Joe O'Toole (Independent)

The Travers report is absolutely clear. I have read it three times and do not doubt its accuracy. In 1975 and 1976, the then Minister for Health, Brendan Corish, was a member of the Labour Party but this could have happened to anyone. His Department's legal officer gave him advice to the effect that the charge was not legal. In the officer's words, the charges would require a legal amendment and could not be done by regulation. The Minister told the then Fine Gael Minister for Finance, Richie Ryan, that he was proposing to implement charges and the latter agreed. Mr. Corish wrote a letter to the effect that the Health Act 1954 and the Health Contributions (Amendment) Act 1974 should be interpreted on the basis that those in long-term care would not be seen to have full eligibility and so forth.

There can be no doubt that this started the process. If not complete closure, resolution has been brought about in the past two months by the current Minister for Health and Children, who happens to be a member of the Progressive Democrats.

The issue in question now is what happened over the past year and what is the role of the former Fianna Fáil Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Martin. We can come to our own conclusions about the conflicting evidence but the facts are mostly clear. A briefing document was put together for the Minister at a meeting in the Gresham Hotel in December 2003 but the extent to which it outlined the importance of the charges issue is unclear. However, we know it was on the agenda and we can assume the legal advice received by the South Eastern Health Board comprised a section of that paper. We know that one Minister of State read the document and that another may not have done so. However, we are unsure as to whether Deputy Martin read it. Senator Browne is correct in that the Minister should have read it or should have had it brought to his attention. That was his responsibility.

It is clear that, whether he read it or not, the correct decision was taken at the meeting to seek legal advice. The Minister was made aware of this in the ten minutes it took the Secretary General of the Department to walk from the steps of the Gresham Hotel up the steps to the meeting room. This was a minor issue when the major topic of the day was the Hanly report, the CEOs and the Health Service Executive.

The following week the Department set up a high-level meeting to prepare documentation to implement the decisions of the meeting and to seek the advice of the Attorney General. We can assume this documentation contained all of the background information, the available advice and a letter to be signed by and from the Secretary General to the Attorney General. This was a letter that had been placed on his desk on 27 January 2004. The Secretary General recalls receiving and reading it but he does not know what happened afterwards. He claims he did not send it to the Attorney General and that he would have brought it to the Minister but has no recollection of doing so, nor does he recollect discussing it with the Minister. There is no paper trail leading to the Minister's office to indicate it ever arrived there. A senior member of the Department of Health and Children gave a verbal account to the effect that he saw a folder in the outer office of the Minister's secretariat.