MR Austin Currie has rejected calls for a national child-care authority on the unusual grounds that his weekly meetings with civil servants have rendered it unnecessary.
The announcement, made at a conference on childcare, will disappoint those who believe such an authority could do much to Coordinate disjointed child care services.
It comes at a time when suspicions are growing in the child care movement that the social services inspectorate announced last week by the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, will lack the powers needed to make it independent.
Calls for a national child care authority have been made by a number of bodies over the years and most recently by Focus Ireland which last week published a report on residential childcare.
"Our current system is fragmented and is evolving in an ad hoc way usually in response to crisis after crisis," said its president, Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, in a statement issued at a Focus Ireland conference yesterday.
Responsibility for child care services is divided between the Departments of Health, Justice and Education, and Focus Ireland, as well as many other commentators, see a national child care authority as a way of avoiding the conflicts and duplications which result.
Mr Currie, who is Minister of State at the Departments of Health, Education and Justice, said yesterday that "the establishment of a national child care authority is not justified in view of my role"
He promised the early publication of a juvenile justice Bill.
Plans to make the proposed social services inspectorate part of the Department of Health were criticised yesterday by the Children's Rights Alliance, an umbrella group representing 51 organisations working with children.
"The running of such an inspectorate in the Department of Health will necessarily compromise its independence and will not be in the best interests of children," said the alliance chairwoman, Ms Madeleine Clarke.
Mr Owen Keenan, the director of Barnardos, said "To be effective an inspectorate must be independent, have teeth, be properly resourced, it must promote good practice as well as inquire into bad practice, and its reports must be published."