Brendan Ryan (Labour)

How is it possible to have a nursing home carry on like that without anybody taking action to stop it until a television programme is made? That is the issue. The rest of what is in the script is very important but it does not have anything to do with the issue we are discussing. The television programme did no more than make visual in one specific case what we all should have known and did know — if we did not want to deny it — for the past 20 years.

In 1984, RTE produced a television programme called "Public Account" which recounted horrific stories of nursing homes. Now we know what happened in 2001, 2002 and 2003. We know what the Human Rights Commission said and we also know the grand way in which the Department of Health and Children has consistently treated anybody who tried to get it to do anything. It made the Ombudsman wait for nearly a year when he compiled his report some time ago on families being made to pay for elderly relatives in nursing homes. The suggestion that this is a horrible story that nobody knew anything about, or somehow that it is the Opposition's fault that nothing was done about it, is quite extraordinary. Why was the problem ignored?

I am sick of people claiming to be the Minister for Health and Children who deliberately leave unread any brief which gives them anything other than glory, which would mean they would have to take hard decisions to make people accountable and take responsibility. It is a problem that Fianna Fáil has in particular and the Progressive Democrats are catching it, which is that Government is about glory not about responsibility. If nursing homes are badly run, it is the Government's fault. If people in nursing homes are ripped off, it is the fault of the Government and the Minister. There is no way out of that. If people do not wish to take responsibility they should go and allow those of us who do to take responsibility. The Government parties have lost the will to take the blame or the responsibility for anything.