David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his officials. I thank them for the briefing and for the work they are doing. I also want to join with the Minister in acknowledging the work the Defence Forces and Civil Defence did during the flooding in my part of the country when they came down and helped out with sand bags and took people in boats out of houses and all that kind of stuff. As the Minister knows, it was horrific at the time. I want to thank them, through the Minister, for the work they did at that time and in previous years when it happened. They came down and helped out in the past when we had other flooding issues. As I said today in the Chamber, hopefully, we will have fine weather and longer days and we will not be seeing that this year again, but who knows?

On the Civil Defence, the Minister wrote to me on 5 May last on the privileging of paramedics and advanced paramedics. It was an issue I brought up when we talked about this in the select committee at the time. Has there been any movement on that? Some of the paramedics and advanced paramedics were not privileged to handle certain controlled drugs. Even though they had that right in their civilian jobs, when they joined the Civil Defence, it was not possible. There was an issue ongoing between the local authorities, trade unions and the regulator. The Department was also keeping an eye on it. The Minister might not have that information now but if not, he might come back to me at a later stage on whether that issue has been resolved or not. It was causing a certain amount of angst for those small number of highly skilled advanced paramedics who could not actually do the job they were expected to do.