Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have come from a meeting of the health committee at which the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald announced that the Family Support Agency will commence its work in January. This is a welcome development. More than 4,000 staff will transfer to the agency. The establishment of the agency is a significant child care reform, considering that the annual birth rate is 75,000.

I have raised on other occasions the matter of funding to agencies and organisations in the health sector. It is time to debate the system of governance in these agencies. Senator Crown raised a very important point about the boards of agencies and to whom they are answerable. The Department is funding eight of these organisations amounting to more than €1.69 billion but that Department does not have any nominees on those boards. It is time we debated this matter and it is time to consider restructuring these boards to ensure that they are directly accountable to the HSE and to the Department and ultimately to this House. Those boards are not directly accountable to the Houses of the Oireachtas or to the committees. We should debate the fact that 25% of the health budget is going to agencies whose boards do not have departmental or HSE representation.