Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I, too, would like to commend Senator Mark Daly for bringing forward the Bill. I welcome the Minister of State to the House. It is very hard to argue with the motivation behind the Bill, especially given what we have seen over the past couple of weeks. What Senator Craughwell said is correct. Too often there is political accountability, and rightly so, but it is rare that there is accountability in terms of official Ireland. We all remember the issue of hepatitis C, which was a national scandal. Knowingly contaminating and killing people is totally wrong. In my view, there had to be accountability.

There are issues with the Bill and the Minister of State has outlined the concerns. He very forcefully concurred with the sentiments behind the Bill, as we all do. The role of the House is to scrutinise and improve Bills and make them workable. That happened with the Irish Sign Language Act, which Senator Daly successfully sponsored. There is no reason that should not happen with this Bill.

The Minister of State's reflections and concerns are genuinely held, given the professional advice available to him. The suggestion which has been made, namely, that there should be engagement between Senators Daly and the Minister of State's officials, as has happened successfully before, should happen.

It is absolutely correct to say that this is a recommendation of the Law Reform Commission. It does a superb job in identifying where we need to reform the law. When we and elements and organs within the State do wrong, there should be political accountability and accountability on the part of individuals when that wrong is deemed to have been done maliciously, knowingly and in a cavalier way which ultimately cost people their lives.

This is an important Bill. I am speaking in a personal capacity and have spoken with Fine Gael colleagues. We want to see the Bill progress. The debate here is important and I sincerely hope that following on from that there is high-level engagement between the Senator and the Minister of State's advisers and officials and the Bill comes back to the House in early course. I hope that we can get it passed by the House and moved to the Lower House and that it becomes law. Senator Daly was quite right when he said that until such time as there is the threat of jail, there will not be the type of accountability we want to see, which the public expects and the citizens of our country have a right to.