Mary O'Rourke (Fianna Fail)

I will bring him. The Secretary General of the Department will no longer be the Accounting Officer as that function has passed to the Health Service Executive. However, I have always been of the opinion that the Department should have two Secretaries General, one in charge of everyday fire brigade issues, which erupt about ten times a day, and the other in charge of legislation and policy-making. That has not transpired but the idea has been floated for a number of years. The Accounting Officer has been deployed to the HSE and perhaps there is no need for two Secretaries General.

Pressure of work is significant in every Department but it is enormous in the Department of Health and Children. I was Minister for nine weeks and that is why I am aware of the geography of the building. Two weeks were taken up by Christmas but, even in the seven weeks I worked there, I grasped how much work is involved. However, that does not obscure the fact that long-stay charges were a high priority demanding attention. The issue was not attended to and that remains the mystery at the heart of this matter. The Secretary General would have known well, given his vast experience, that this issue needed to be addressed and brought to the Government's attention. I fail to understand why the Secretary General and his predecessors did not attend to this issue with alacrity and celerity.

Files are sent to Ministers, initialled, dated and forwarded and everything is logged but, on this occasion, the file was not logged. That remains a huge mystery. The Secretary General said he cleared his desk every 24 hours, which is an admirable trait. I do not know what recesses of mind led to the folder not being forwarded. My conclusion is that it was because it involved a significant financial commitment. The Department, as always, would be battered by the Department of Finance because it is a high spending Department. I approve of the Department of Finance being the watchdog of the public purse, otherwise we would be a profligate nation. Perhaps in a recess of the Secretary General's mind he thought, "Oh God, this is going to be another huge row over finance, how are we going to cope with it?" However, if that was the case the probity of the system and the public service ethos of individuals should have risen above that.

John Travers states at the beginning of the report that he will not give a judgment on morality and asks where one could find a person who could judge on the morality of this issue. I applaud the Minister for grasping the issue. She must have thought, "Oh my God, what I have come into? Angola writ large. How will I cope and manage?" However, she grasped the issue and produced the report. As a result, she has exceeded all my ideas of her. She has a strong record of public service and trust. The Government has also grasped the issue, although it cannot have welcomed it. However, it must be dealt with and I commend the Minister on her business-like approach to the issue and her sense of civic duty.