Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. The report has been exceptionally well prepared and we owe Mr. John Travers a debt of gratitude. He has put the whole issue together clearly. I have read the report in detail and it is a pointless exercise to go back over every detail in it because people can read it for themselves. This issue goes back a long time and all the former Ministers and Secretaries General are named in this regard. Mr. Kelly is only one of the Secretaries General who had responsibility in this area. In the circumstances, I believe he is being very honourable in taking up the new appointment. I do not think he wanted to engage in further debate on this issue.

The matter is now being dealt with positively by the Government. As the Tánaiste said, there are 315,000 possible beneficiaries, 20,000 of whom are still alive. We should move forward, in accordance with the Supreme Court's decision, to provide funding for those individuals to which they are entitled and of which they were illegally deprived by the State. The factual position is contained in the Travers report and we should now move on. The blame game is finished and Members of the Oireachtas cannot benefit from going into the circumstances surrounding this affair.

From 1987 to 1989, I served in the Department of Health and I want to make it clear that I was not delegated any responsibility for anything in this area. The record shows that the Government makes decisions concerning the delegation of specific responsibilities. However, the current responsibilities did not exist in the 1987-89 period when I served in that Department. I want to make that clear because people may try to be mischievous in that regard.

Particular areas of responsibility can be delegated to a Minister or Minister of State by order of the Cabinet. However, no Secretary General or other departmental official will report to a Minister of State concerning an area for which the Minister of State is not responsible.