Fiona O'Malley (Dún Laoghaire, Progressive Democrats)

It requires the provision of beds for sleeping drunks and extra gardaí as I have already mentioned. The practicality of the Fine Gael motion makes it ludicrous, which is a pity. Under these proposals, hard-working staff would spend far more time dealing with drunks and attending to their needs than doing what they are supposed to be doing, which is treating the accident and emergency patients.

The opposition's second proposal is to have extra gardaí in accident and emergency units at weekends. We have a proposal. It could not be called a policy because it appears to have been plucked from the air. Tonight in the Seanad, on another Private Member's motion, Fine Gael looked for extra gardaí to tackle anti-social behaviour. Between 1994 and 1996 Fine Gael presided over a reduction in the number of gardaí. Now that we have some more, we must think carefully as to how they are deployed and to have them going in and out of accident and emergency units chasing drunks does not appear to be the answer. Accident and emergency units would be more like a carnival than anything else.

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