Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

One morning when we were walking over a bridge, we were lucky to get to the other side alive, but we did, thank God, and we are here to tell the tale. It is an excellent institution.

Why do we constantly commission reports? I dealt with the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, today regarding cardiac services in the south east in University Hospital Waterford. That was another report. We have scaffolding outside Leinster House. I was talking to the builders today. They are great lads and are doing a great job. I asked them whether the scaffolding was to keep up the building, but they told me that, no, it was only to keep up the steel framework.

McAlpine would not have it when he was building in London. I said it would keep up Shannon Bridge or the whole of Dublin Castle. It is only to put up the scaffolding. They told me the ground conditions here are an issue. If we are not careful, we will fall through the cracks someday. The scaffolding they have out there would keep Dublin Castle up. They are doing a good job on health and safety and everything else.

Why do we have all these reports? We have reports everywhere; they are coming out of our ears. Common sense is all we want. We do not need half of the reports because we know what is going on. There was a study from University of Limerick and the Bill could have been constructed around that. I heard the contributions of Deputies O'Dea, Penrose, Daly, Collins and others on the Bill. I watched them on a monitor. It is about common sense. It should be based on respect and support for workers instead of trying to milk them and blackguard them. The figures from the report and the CSO figures are stark. We need to act. We do not need to give another six months to debating this Bill. We need to debate it on Committee Stage and amend it to make it more meaningful. We need to direct the penalties in a more punitive way where they are deserved and in a less punitive way to ordinary small business people who are complying with everything. They have NERA and a plethora of Government agencies that have to be complied with and rightly so. It is overbearing on small companies because the amount of paperwork that has to be dealt with is enormous. The Bill is weak. I can see the lobbying of ISME in it. Sorry, not ISME, the bigger one.

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