Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will ask nicely. I am sure the Deputy does so too. I am of the view that it should be on a legal footing. Government is working on that and I hope to have news for Deputy O'Reilly in respect of it shortly. We are also keeping our Northern Ireland colleagues informed of our plans in that regard and we had a quad group meeting recently with the Deputy First Minister, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Tánaiste and my counterpart in the North.

I will absolutely take away the issue relating to the Traveller community and work with the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Development and his Department on it. I will come back to the Deputy for more detail on that.

The Deputy raised the issue of symptomatic cancer patients. I will certainly talk to those involved with the HSE's national cancer control programme today or tomorrow on that, and I will revert to the Deputy tomorrow.

With regard to the enhanced nursing practice measure, the numbers are going up. We need to get everybody paid. The HSE has told me that there has been a situation where some people have been out of payroll offices and so on. I will keep in close contact with the INMO on this. We need to get to that point.

It is money owing to them. They won it, it was agreed to, and the money has been allocated and should be paid over.

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