Jerry Cowley (Mayo, Independent)

I am delighted to speak on this Bill. I cannot stand over this legislation, as it is legislation on the hoof. There is a sense of expediency about the Bill, which upsets me. There is a need to provide legislation to control what is going on with alternative practitioners as some of them are preventing people from having legitimate treatment, which is costing those people their lives. Yet we are still waiting for legislation on this and we do not have a hope in getting it through the House. The Government pays lip service to supporting older people in their own community, but there is always a lack of legislation that would oblige the Government to provide the resources necessary to allow that lip service to become a reality. This Bill is no exception either. I support it, but it is only mending the cracks.

North-South bodies are an important element in this small island and it is important that we foster and encourage North-South relationships. There is a dubious distinction in one area, neither the North nor the South has a helicopter emergency medical service. Ireland is the only country in Europe without that service. I met successive Ministers for Health and Bairbre de Brún on the matter. I met the North-South emergency care body, set up under the Good Friday Agreement, in Newry which agreed to examine the issue of a helicopter emergency medical service for North and South. Both areas have been without the service for so long that we could learn from the systems around Europe and create a system of which we could be truly proud.

A feasibility study was proposed which was commissioned in 2002, but not published until 2004. The haste involved in this Bill was certainly not put into producing that report. The report proves the case for a helicopter emergency medical service as essential for inter-hospital transport and beyond both North and South and in a North-South context. Unfortunately, that has not happened. The Department thought so little of the report that it did not have the decency to publish it in book form. It only published it on the website, despite the fact that the study was set up in a North-South context.

I hope the Government will give the same urgency to the report and to doing something about it as it is giving to solving this situation to get itself out of a spot. I urge the Minister to examine the position with regard to a helicopter emergency medical service. It is important that we deal urgently with the situation where people with, for example, fractured spines are put into the back of ambulances to be taken at 30 mph on the rocky road to Dublin with their future well-being and their lives at stakes. I support this Bill with the provisos I have mentioned.

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