John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, was distressed to hear of the conditions and, in particular, the indefinite nature of the detention experienced by people in the refugee-asylum system. I am glad that colleagues have raised the subject. Clearly, there is a critical need both to improve the week-to-week living conditions of the people concerned and, much more important, to sort out what is the plan to process them and make an appropriate decision. They do not want to be slightly more comfortable prisoners not knowing how long is their sentence. They want to know what their future is and what plans they can make for their lives.

I am delighted that my good friend and colleague, Senator Colm Burke, has mentioned the plight of junior hospital doctors. He has been an informed and authoritative champion of all manner of issues in the health service and I hope his party appreciates the expertise and diligence he brings to legislation and other matters relating to the health service. However, it should be irrelevant if every junior doctor in Ireland stayed at home today because they are trainees and it is a profound indictment of our system of delivering health care that we depend on the indentured servitude of people who should be receiving training to provide a service that should be provided by career level GPs and hospital specialists. This problem needs to be tackled. Merely palliating it by reducing them below the 24 hour working threshold or improving their overtime does not fix the problem. If people were to lose a gold fáinne down a drainpipe at home, they would not get a plumber's apprentice out to recover it. They would expect a trained plumber. However, if their precious son or daughter needed critically important emergency surgery, they would be happy to bring him or her to a hospital where he or she would be looked after by a trainee, which is inappropriate.

I thank the Taoiseach for putting the referendum to the people. He promised before the last general election that he would do so and he did. He deserves our gratitude for being honest and I hope he takes what should be for him a positive message during his period of reflection. He should acknowledge that the people have given him, our leader, a mandate, which is to reform the political process and begin with reform of the Seanad. This is not a time for victors to gloat or losers to recriminate; it is a time for all of us to knock our heads together to reform our republic and the way it does its political business. We should have a two-pronged approach to this matter. It would be appropriate for the Constitutional Convention to consider big picture issues, but I agree with Senators Katherine Zapppone and Feargal Quinn that we could do things in the next few weeks. I would love if their Bill or mine or perhaps even a negotiated amalgam of the two was put before the House, passed and then put before the other House for implementation, but, even if that is too controversial, would it not be deadly simple to go back to the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution in 1979 and legislate for the result of the referendum that was passed by 92% of the population to extend the voting franchise for university seats to every third level graduate and in the process give approximately 35% of the population a direct say in the election of the Seanad?

Two other mandates have been given. We have been given a mandate by a populous, one half of whom were prepared to judge our performance worthy of capital punishment. We need to get our act together; we need to refocus on the intent of the House and make sure those often cliched but, sadly, often justifiable criticisms made of this institution as being a prep school for the Dáil or a wind-down on the way out of Leinster House are no longer valid and that Members do the job they are supposed to do.

I am delighted to see some people in the Press Gallery today because another mandate has been given. The real problem of absenteeism in this House is absenteeism of the press. One of the reasons we have never been able to make a case for what we do here-----

We have never ever been able to make a case for what we do.