Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I presume colleagues saw last night that Jim Norton won a very well-merited Tony award. We remember him fondly from his role as the bishop in "Father Ted". The more I watch the new Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and given his obvious officer material, the more he reminds me of Bishop Len. He refuses to engage in the same language as the rest of us. We keep asking him questions and he keeps avoiding them.

I refer to this PPP. It is clear the Minister has not read Newton Emerson on PPPs and I would recommend that he should. We are trying to establish whether the Minister is satisfied that a developer involved in controversy, who has withdrawn from five contracts in the public sector, will have any implications for this building project. Three times today the Minister has told me, over-piously, "I do not involve myself in tendering". I am not asking him to involve himself in tendering so I advise him to get down off his episcopal pedestal and tell the House whether he is satisfied that Bernard McNamara will not do what he did in the city and walk out because we changed the design of some element of the prison and so leave us with a mess on our hands. This is a reasonable question and all I want is the answer.

We also want to know the answer to the question of the detention of youths at Thornton Hall. What is the Minister saying? Is he saying it is likely because Lusk is behind this project in planning terms, or so the Minister said today, that we are likely for a temporary period to detain youths at Thornton Hall? This would seem to me to envisage an extraordinarily long time span for the construction or reconstruction of Lusk. What is the Minister's position? Is he saying that in any event, it is not the medium-term intention that young people will be detained at Kilsallaghan? If I were Minister, I would ensure I was briefed on these questions.

The Minister dealt with Deputy O'Rourke when he said she had asked a question about the community service scheme. I was here listening to Deputy O'Rourke and she did not major in that subject; she asked the Minister why he was moving Dóchas. She gave the House a long peroration on why we should keep Dóchas where it is and he chose to ignore the lady.

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