Minister for Health Mary Harney insisted today she was not dodging responsibility for childcare issues.
Ms Harney is under pressure over the current controversy over the HSE's failure to provide figures for the number of children who have died in care or its failure to hand over files of children who died in care to an independent review group.
While officially the Minister for Health and Children, she said powers in relation to children’s issues had been devolved to Minister of State for Children Barry Andrews.
"One thing I don't think anyone could accuse me of is dodging things. I have three ministers of state in the department and I think I would be generally known if any powers are devolved not to interfere with their work but to support," Ms Harney said.
"I'm more than happy to deal with the issue but I have total confidence as the Government does in the Minister's (Mr Andrews) handling of this situation," she added.
Ms Harney, who was speaking after a function at Dublin Castle, said a newly appointed internal legal representative with the HSE had recently brought to their attention the fact that there were legal difficulties with the handing over of files of children who died in care to the independent review group, set up in March by Mr Andrews to review deaths of children in care over the past 10 years. She said the Government would bring forward legislation quickly to address this.
Instead of new legislation the Government could have established a commission of inquiry to review the files but that "would take a considerable length of time and it would cost an enormous amount of money", she said.
She added that they also looked to see if they could "give a direction under the 2004 Act" or use some other powers short of a commission of inquiry. However, all the advice from the Attorney General and others was to bring in new legislation as "the most appropriate way to deal with this in order to ensure that the HSE are appropriately indemnified and that they don't have to spend years getting permission from what would be thousands and thousands of families".
Referring to the HSE's inability to provide figures for the numbers of children who died in care, she said: "Clearly we have to be concerned that we don't have the data. We understand from the HSE that 23 people up to the start of this year died in care and if you add the latest, Daniel McAnaspie, to that that's 24. Six have died in the first few months of this year".
She pointed out that what the HSE had been asked to do was examine the numbers of children who died over the last decade in their care as well as those, living in their own families, whose particular situation was brought to the attention of the HSE. "Clearly that is a mammoth task ...but I want to see that brought to a conclusion as quickly as possible".
Meanwhile HSE's chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm said the HSE was working to restructure and standardise child care and child protection services since the Monageer case in 2007. He said it would be another two years before this work was complete.
He said the number of children who died while legally in the care of the HSE was absolutely "not 200" as had been reported at the weekend. The figure for those who died while legally in HSE care had been put at 23, he said.
But he said when one also looked at the numbers of children who were in touch with HSE social workers when they died or at some point before they died, the figures would increase. "If you start talking about children who had any contact with a social worker or with our social services up and down this country over the past 10 years there will be I'm sure very significant numbers of children," he said.
Some would be children who were born premature and died. It would take huge resources to go back over paper files to find this number, he adding. "It's not a button that you push to get that information," he said. "I've no idea where the 200 figure is coming from but that might be an explanation."