Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I am coming to the peculiar way the Department of Health and Children deals with legislation of which this Act was symptomatic. The Act had amendments to the Health Act, including eligibility for school medical examinations, tacked onto the end. The Title did not reflect its contents. Then we had the first attempt at compensating people for the nursing home debacle, which was rejected as unconstitutional. I have had experience in this House of the way the Department of Health and Children drafts legislation. On this occasion I do not mean this as a criticism of the Tánaiste; I have plenty of those. Time and again it arises that the Department drafts peculiar legislation and operates in a peculiar manner. Maybe now that a couple of hundred staff have been relieved from the duty of answering Dáil questions they might get involved in putting some sort of consistency into the legislation. That is what caused so much outrage about this Bill, which was meant to be good and welcome news for the victims of a profoundly cruel mistake, if not an act of deliberate, culpable negligence by agents of the State. Something that is enlightened, forward-looking and welcome started a row with the support groups for those who have been at the receiving end of this. I wonder how this Department lands itself and its political heads in this sort of trouble time and again. The former leader of Fine Gael, Deputy Noonan, had his political career undermined by something he was advised to do by that Department. He acted on the advice and was lampooned across the nation because of it. I wonder about this. The remarks attributed to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Cowen, about Angola may not be far off the mark.

I would love the Tánaiste to explain why she felt it was appropriate to insert a provision that, sensible, intelligent and compassionate woman that she is, she must have known would start a row. Why not deal with the row separately and deal with the good news and sensible proposals here? I read what was there of the Committee Stage debate on this in the other House. Unfortunately it was truncated. It would have been worthwhile to tease out many other issues, but the Dáil does not seem to have the willingness or capacity to deal with legislation in the detail that this House does. This House does not guillotine legislation and that is to the credit of the Leader, who seems to be able to face down Ministers about how much time is required in a way that senior Members of Dáil Éireann do not seem to be able to do. For that I commend the Leader. I dare not say long may she continue to hold that position because she would be offended. I will leave Senator Bannon and the Leader to sort themselves out.