Is it correct that every action the HSE has taken since it was established has been to try to stop what Deputy Martin did as Minister for Health and Children? Is that a fair summary of what the Tánaiste has said?

The Tánaiste agrees.

Now, after Deputy Kenny's latest allegation, it is another case of closing the portal after the horse has bolted. There was a time when Fianna Fáil backbenchers entered the House for the Order of Business and Leaders' Questions. They do not do that anymore, for whatever reason.

We are here.

That will be the size of the Fianna Fáil backbench after the next election.

I thank Deputy Ryan for that, we are sorry he is retiring. If the backbenchers were here——

I would prefer Deputy Rabbitte to address topical issues. He was doing well when he started but then went off the subject.

I know that since the Ceann Comhairle got his present position, he would prefer me to address matters in a certain manner. With all due respect, I will address the matter in my own way.

Standing Orders allow for a brief question and that——

I am sure the backbenchers would tell the Tánaiste——

What about the money Deputy Rabbitte made——

I ask Deputy Brady to allow Deputy Rabbitte without interruption.

——the extent of concern that exists about issues arising last week. I will instance from Deputy Johnny Brady's own constituency one of the many people who approached me yesterday in fury about one aspect of this matter, which is that it is not possible to find out what happened, why it happened and who is responsible. The Taoiseach entered the House and denied all responsibility. He said it was not an information technology system, that the allegations were incorrect and misleading and all they were doing was to try to add new ideas but that it went wrong. Nobody will admit what happened.

What does the Tánaiste know since she took over? How much of this debacle of €160 million was incurred on her watch and how much was the responsibility of her predecessor? Did the decision go to Government? Was the original decision made by Government? Who was in charge of the project? Who made the decision to continue with the expenditure? If the first phase started out at €8.8 million, why did nobody shout stop when it went to €18.8 million, €28.8 million, €38.8 million or €98 million? Who is responsible? Was this matter ever brought back to Government? If a decision was made to extend it from a payroll system to a human resource management system, who made that decision? Were the consultants, Deloitte & Touche, given an open-ended cheque? Is there a contract with the company? Has the Tánaiste seen the contract? What does the contract provide for? Was it open-ended in that the company could send in any kind of invoice it liked?

Deputy Rabbitte, your time has concluded.

How many of its own people did the company send in? How much did it cost to commission premises for them? How much did it cost to produce newsletters? Who was monitoring this project? The Minister is in her position a year. Before it was decided to collapse this system, she must have established to her own satisfaction who is responsible for this situation.

What can the Tánaiste say?

To answer Deputy Rabbitte's first point in regard to my colleague, Deputy Martin, my predecessor as Minister for Health and Children, a hospital information system was being rolled out in a number of hospitals in Cork, Tralee and elsewhere. The cost of that project was going to escalate to approximately €400 million and he put the brakes on it and refused to give any more money towards it at the start of 2004.

Regarding this particular project, as I said last week, it justified the idea of not having 11 different health boards with 253 members, which was what we had to deliver health services, and demonstrated the need for the Health Service Executive. It was long overdue. This is one example, among many others——

It is no better now.

It is a lot better. I told the House last week when I became aware there were issues around the PPARS system. Obviously, it did not go to Cabinet. Every matter——

A €150 million——

The Estimates go to Cabinet. The Deputy knows that, he has been at the Cabinet table. The health boards made the application for the money to put in a payroll system.

The health boards had no involvement in this decision. The Tánaiste's predecessor made the decision.

Sorry, Deputy, you are not the leader of the Labour Party.

They were given the money. An evaluation is being done both by the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Health Service Executive and the HSE will decide at its board meeting in December whether to continue to roll out this system. It will be a matter for the executive having evaluated its requirements and whether this system can meet its needs but among the difficulties, and I want to acknowledge them, is that there was no fixed price contract with the consultants. It appears that the more they worked, the more they got paid. There was no incentive in the contract for the consultants to deliver a particular project and get paid on the basis of results, which should be normal.

Who agreed to that?

That would be normal and it should be the case. I am not aware of the number of individuals from this consulting firm who worked on this project but I do know that the amount of money spent on consultancy in this project and in other projects is excessive. That is why the Government decided today to put a new process in place across Departments in regard to both consultancies and information technology. We all have to learn lessons from this experience.

When I became aware in July that there were concerns about this matter, I spoke to the Secretary General in my Department. He met representatives of the HSE and asked them, on my authority, to ensure that no more staff were put working on this project pending its evaluation, and he asked that the evaluation be completed over the summer. It was completed and that was the evaluation that went to the board of the HSE last week.

Did the Tánaiste see the invoices?

I remind the Tánaiste that this is Deputy Rabbitte's question and in fairness to Deputy Rabbitte, she should not answer any other Deputy's questions.

Hay Management Consultants carried out a review of this matter in 2002 and said at the time, as the Deputy is aware, that what was envisaged in 1998 and 1999 at £9 million would not be sufficient to do what was required and that it would be at least ten times greater than that. The mistake was that a business case was not made for this technology before we embarked on the project.

Who is responsible?

The regime that was responsible, the health boards structure, has been abolished and Deputy Gormley opposed its abolition.

The Tánaiste is responsible.

Deputy Gormley, you will leave the House if this continues.

The Tánaiste is trying to insult our intelligence. She is passing the buck.

Other than admitting that a business case was not made for the decision in the first place, the Tánaiste has not dealt with any of the questions.

She cannot.

Who is responsible for this matter? She cannot tell the House that the health boards decided that they would embark on this mission. That is not the way it happened. Why does the Tánaiste continue to state that if only she had known about all the differences in practice between the 11 health boards this would not have happened and that this justifies the HSE? How does it justify the HSE? If the health boards were still there, whatever their defects, it is sure that the alarm bells would have gone off before they went off in this particular case, some seven years after the idea was originated. I am sure all of the Tánaiste's colleagues behind her agree with that.

Everybody who was ever near a health board knows that there were different practices in different health boards, different rates of pay, different systems and so on. Everybody knew that before this project was embarked on. Surely all of that should have been regularised before such an engagement took place. The Tánaiste has not dealt with the question of responsibility.

The Deputy's time has concluded.

May I ask her about her statement that she will personally sign off on all consultancies in future? Does that mean she will personally monitor them? Does that mean that we now have a blurring of the lines between policy and operational executive action? Is that Government policy or just Progressive Democrats policy? I note that the Government decision of today to which she referred does not confirm anything along those lines. It states that Ministers will also have to confirm that any moneys spent on consultancy in their Departments is necessary in time for next year's Estimates. Apart from the incompetent English, that does not change anything except that provision must be made in the Estimates, and some Minister cannot decide during the course of the year that he will award an open-ended contract to consultants.

Is the Minister saying, because I find this fantastic——

Deputy, I ask you to conclude. You have got double the time allotted to you.

What do you think, a Cheann Comhairle, the Government decision of this morning will do? The Government will bring in consultants to advise on the type of new system it should operate. The Government will also be able to bring in external expertise from the private sector and internationally. That should put the tin hat on it.

A new flavour.

Deputy Rabbitte, I ask you to give way to the Tánaiste.

Do I understand the Tánaiste to have said in the reply that there was no contract that fixed any price with the consultants, Deloitte & Touche, or with the consultants brought in to monitor Deloitte & Touche, that it was open-ended and that for as long as they could keep claiming money, money would be paid out by the State?

Deputy Rabbitte, if you are not happy with the Standing Orders I ask you to complain.

I am happy enough with them, Sir. You are the one with the difficulty.

Deputy Rabbitte may have been aware of all the practices but very few other people knew that we have 25,000 different work rosters. In some areas in the country, people doing the same job work a different number of hours.

The Tánaiste should talk to one of the backbenchers. They all knew about it.

Did the Tánaiste ever speak to the matrons or the nursing staff?

In some areas in the country a holy day of obligation was a bank holiday and bank holiday rates were paid and so on. To expect a computer code to reconcile all of that was expecting too much.

The Tánaiste gave the blank cheque.

Regarding consultancies, it is the case that as Minister for Health and Children I am accountable to this House for policy, legislative matters and so on in the Department of Health and Children, and the accounting officer for the HSE is Professor Brendan Drumm, whose position we provided for under the new legislation. If I am to answer in this House for the appointment of consultants, I want to be certain that we are only using consultants where it is absolutely necessary. It is good practice, therefore, that a case would be made to me when we are not using the in-house expertise available in the Department. That will be good for the Department and as far as accountability is concerned.

It is a matter for every Minister to decide how he operates his own Department. It is not a matter for me to tell others what to do in that regard.