Results 1,021-1,040 of 1,253 for speaker:John Crown

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

John Crown: I second the amendment.

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

John Crown: I second the amendment. I agree completely with the sentiments expressed by Senator Barrett. The HSE is a failed experiment. The notion of having a single, nationally commanded and controlled managerialist bureaucracy micro-managing every aspect of our hospitals and other parts of health system has failed. We need to hasten the model's extinction. Many people, on hearing this argument,...

Seanad: Order of Business (24 Oct 2012)

John Crown: I preface a request to invite the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to the House with a brief statement. Yesterday was the 37th anniversary of the murder of Gordon Hamilton Fairley, the only medical doctor to die in the Northern Ireland Troubles. He was a medical oncologist and leader of the cancer medicine movement in the UK. He was walking down a street in London when...

Seanad: Junior Certificate Reform and the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy: Statements (23 Oct 2012)

John Crown: The Minister should examine the entire issue and the nuance of their statement. They stated that the data to date had not given a particular reason to be worried about an earthquake. This was not unreasonable. There are no data that can be used to predict earthquakes. We live in a world in which nearly half of the citizens of the most powerful country with the largest economy believe that...

Seanad: Junior Certificate Reform and the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy: Statements (23 Oct 2012)

John Crown: I join with colleagues in welcoming the Minister to the House. There are many nice aspects to being in Seanad Éireann, but one of the nicer ones is that no one is ever in the press gallery and few are in the public Gallery. It is like having a private audience with the Minister. He must forgive me if I take this opportunity to try to earwig him regarding a matter that is relevant to the...

Seanad: Mortgage Credit (Loans and Bonds) Bill 2012: Second Stage (17 Oct 2012)

John Crown: This is a brief interjection. I call on the Minister of State to ask the Minister for Finance if he will consider some fundamental changes in the way we do our financial business with regard to the question of mortgage debt and bank sustainability. This is a time of national emergency. Let us reflect on when many people took the advice of bankers. They were a group the people in Ireland...

Seanad: Alcohol Consumption: Statements (Resumed) (17 Oct 2012)

John Crown: Excuse me, will the Minister of State reply today or in the next session?

Seanad: Alcohol Consumption: Statements (17 Oct 2012)

John Crown: I welcome the Minister of State. I look forward to working with him in the years to come. I have a particular interest in health issues. I do not think the Government's thinking, as set out in its strategy, goes far enough. It is time for a little radicalism in its approach. Like most people in this Chamber, I am speaking with the internal conflict of someone who culturally grandfathered...

Seanad: Alcohol Consumption: Statements (17 Oct 2012)

John Crown: I must correct Senator Barrett, who is normally very numerate and statistically astute. He is incorrect in this regard. The reality is that Ireland is placed approximately third in the global league table for the documented consumption of raw alcohol, as measured in terms of litres consumed per head of population. The figures referred to by Senator Barrett related to litres of alcoholic...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Childhood Obesity: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2012)

John Crown: Do any of the witnesses believe that, historically, people's concern about eating disorders in young people, especially young girls, made them shy away from discussing and tackling weight? There was a spurious psychological movement which said that we must not let children worry about their weight or we might feed eating disorders. Second, in terms of activity, would it not be simple to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Childhood Obesity: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2012)

John Crown: If I sent somebody to Dr. O'Shea tomorrow who was a potential candidate for bariatric surgery and they ended up needing the surgery, how long does he estimate it would take him or her to get as far as an operating table?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Childhood Obesity: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2012)

John Crown: What entity is telling Dr. O'Shea the waiting list may not be real?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Childhood Obesity: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2012)

John Crown: This is very important. Does Dr. O'Shea have a document that asks if the waiting list exists? If he does, it should be in the public domain. This is very important.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Childhood Obesity: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2012)

John Crown: I would like the record to reflect the fact that the joke Deputy Robert Dowds and I were sharing was in response to Deputy Mary Mitchell O'Connor's remarks about traffic lights, etc. It was a joke about driving and had nothing to do with anything we were discussing at this meeting.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Childhood Obesity: Discussion (Resumed) (11 Oct 2012)

John Crown: Yes, I should stop digging. The issue of diet has become a much larger consideration in my professional life during the past decade. At our previous meeting I indicated that I had undergone a road-to-Damascus like conversion on the dietary front approximately 12 years ago, which resulted in my losing in the region of 25 kg. I have largely managed to keep that weight off in the intervening...

Seanad: Primary Care Centres: Motion (10 Oct 2012)

John Crown: I will not say too much this evening other than that I would share some interest in seeing a little clarification on the decision-making process that was involved in the primary care centres, but I will not be supporting this motion. I am not a party member. I was a fairly vocal critic of aspects of policy of the outgoing Government. Since coming into this House I have worked very closely...

Seanad: Order of Business (4 Oct 2012)

John Crown: Last night the US State Department expressed its concern to the Government of Bahrain regarding the fact that the appeal of the Bahraini medical staff had been rejected and that these individuals, some of whom have been given very lengthy sentences, had been reincarcerated. As Members will be aware - I am grateful to them for this - last year the House unanimously passed a resolution asking...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Childhood Obesity: Discussion (Resumed) (4 Oct 2012)

John Crown: I understand that. However, part of me thinks that if someone is responsible, not terribly well off and likes to take their kids out once a week for a meal at McDonalds, that is not so bad. The problem is with people who are doing it on a daily basis or three times a week and are not giving their kids a balanced diet. Why should we punish the person who has an occasional hamburger by...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Childhood Obesity: Discussion (Resumed) (4 Oct 2012)

John Crown: I have to be careful how I ask this question, especially with the media present, because I am conscious of public health issues. Does Dr. Foley-Nolan have any concern that the possibility of causing eating disorders through being conscious of weight made people shy away from the issue of addressing children's weight? I have a personal professional perspective on this. I think we became...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Childhood Obesity: Discussion (Resumed) (4 Oct 2012)

John Crown: I thank the delegates. I am sorry I was not present for the entire presentation. I am a doctor and practise cancer medicine. In our field in the past decade there has been a greatly increased focus on diet and obesity. It is now appreciated that it is one of the great unappreciated risk factors for a number of cancers. Statistics have emerged which show that if there was a substantial...