Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 6, subsection (1), line 5, to delete "including" and substitute "being".

This amendment proposes enabling the Health Service Executive to enter into an arrangement with anybody to carry out the repayment to people of money stolen from them. It is worded in a way to ensure the service can be contracted out to a private body if the HSE so wishes.

I listened to the Minister of State when we discussed this matter on Second Stage and he said the problem was that the HSE did not have the resources to do it. If a private body is to be contracted to do it, will it do it free of charge? The Minister of State knows that is not the case, therefore, the private body will also have to have resources given to it. From where will those resources come? Will they come from the HSE because the private body will not do it for nothing? It will do it for a fee, which will be substantial and include a reasonable margin for itself. The Minister of State's idea was that if the HSE did it, it would have to take resources away from some other area but will the Government pay for this body? It will not do so. The HSE will have to provide for this out of its budget.

What we are getting is the belief that the HSE can somehow manage to buy in the expertise cheaper than it can by allocating some of its own resources but that means money being taken from something else. We know the HSE is not exactly awash with money. We only have to ask the people of the north east who are undergoing the prospect of dramatic cutbacks in health services, including the non-employment of an oncologist, which is ironic given the rhetoric about cancer we got yesterday.

The fundamental question is where the money will come from to pay for this process. Will it come from the HSE, in which case it is simply paying it out, or from the Government, in which case the Government is saying it will give it to a private organisation but not to the HSE?

My amendment seeks to keep this provision within the public sector. I am not too hung up on the amendment, nor am I too hung up on who does it provided somebody can give me a plausible reason it would be better to have a private organisation do it than to give the HSE the extra resources to do it. That is what I would like to hear an answer on. Why is this way better and who will pay for it?