Ciarán Cannon (Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 4, line 20, after "functions" to insert the following:

"including political accountability to the Oireachtas".

Only this morning, we have become aware of the details of the Ombudsman for Children's annual report and her damning description of a HSE which operates in a parallel universe, suffers from excessive secrecy and presides over a system that has something rotten within it. From reading the explanatory memorandum of the Bill, one would have trusted some of these problems would be addressed and that real, political accountability would be restored to the system. The term "political accountability to the Oireachtas" is used in the explanatory memorandum but cannot be found in the Bill. There appears to be some disconnect between what the explanatory memorandum sets out and intends for the Bill and what the Bill actually contains. The Bill only addresses part of the problem in that there will be a requirement on the HSE to keep Ministers and Government informed of how service delivery is being affected. However, where there are problems in the context of political accountability the Minister should be accountable to the Dáil to inform it of such information. We seek to amend this section to insert a reference to political accountability. Where the Bill states "the Minister may where he or she considers it in the public interest to do so for the performance of his or her functions", we wish to add the phrase from the explanatory memorandum "including political accountability to the Oireachas".

The Bill must do more than simply provide a channel of communication between the Minister and the HSE, which has until now been either closed or defective. That channel must be open to the extent that the Minister can account to both Houses of the Oireachtas for the running of health and children's services.