Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Recent history should teach those of us in political life some lessons about taking responsibility for the actions of others. Ministers have come under pressure in recent times on a number of high-profile cases such as the blood transfusion anti-D cases, which affected 100,000 women. In 1991 the blood transfusion board was alerted by British hospitals that a batch of anti-D produced in 1977 may have been contaminated. It would later emerge that the blood donor whose plasma was used to make the anti-D had jaundice and hepatitis but these facts had slipped through a sloppy screening process. Despite the alert, no alarm was raised and no action was taken to trace the women who had received doses from the batch, which would have ensured screening slip-ups were not repeated. They were repeated and, in 1982, plasma from another infected donor was used to make anti-D, creating another potentially lethal batch. Hepatitis C awards so far have amounted to €1 billion, with the last awards being paid in 2016. To date, 80 women have lost their lives. We have to ask if the system has learned anything.

Bridget McCole was aggressively and hostilely treated by this State to the point where she was forced into a settlement on the day before she died, on the basis that if she did not accept it, it would bring her all the way to the Supreme Court. In respect of the cervical screening failures, in recent days we have learned that senior officials were aware of CervicalCheck concerns but the State put women through an aggressive and hostile litigation process nevertheless. Would we know anything about the cervical screening issues but for the brave moves of Vicky Phelan, who was prepared to forgo her anonymity to tell us what had happened to her?

All of these cases make me wonder about governance in the public sector. They make me wonder about when political responsibility kicks in. They make me wonder about the most dangerous piece of administrative law ever to have found its way into the public service. Members may not be aware of the Carltona principles or the ideas expressed in them. As established by Carltona v. Commissioners of Works in the UK and having found their way into the Irish public service, the principles make acts of Government Department officials synonymous with the actions of the Minister in charge of the Department. It means a public servant speaking in an official capacity is speaking the words of the Minister. This is lethal because I have seen Minister after Minister dragged into the Dáil and forced to resign over decisions taken by administrative people who remain faceless and hide behind the Carltona doctrine.

I call for a debate on governance in the public sector, which should examine the impact the Carltona principles continue to have on public decision-making and whether they are healthy in a modern State. In the past few minutes, my colleague has raised the issue of people making decisions but he should not tell me that the Minister for Health is advised and informed of every single decision that is taken in the Department of Health and has to take the hit if something goes wrong. The same applies to the Department of Justice and any other Department. It is time we looked at corporate governance in the public sector, in particular how the people who make decisions are responsible for those decisions. Very often a Minister is not aware of what happened until the action has been started. What is the Minister do in that case? Is he or she to come out and say his or her senior officials made a mistake? We have seen the most aggressive treatment towards the women in this case. For some particular bloody reason it always seems to be women.