Results 10,821-10,840 of 11,292 for speaker:Colm Burke

Seanad: Order of Business (20 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: I brought up the issue raised earlier by Senator Bradford at this morning's health committee meeting. The proposal for the meetings between 8 January and 10 January is to allow groups to make a presentation on the issues that have to be dealt with and for Members to get clarification on them. This will allow us to draft the legislation in a careful way. It will be a useful exercise.

Seanad: Order of Business (20 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: I object to that claim. It is outrageous.

Seanad: Order of Business (20 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: I join my colleagues in wishing everyone a happy Christmas but we should also thank the people who work behind the scenes in the Bills Office, making sure that the documentation we receive is in order. I thank them for all their work over the past 12 months. I do not agree with Senator Coghlan about the public interest directors. I served on a State board for ten years as a nominee of Cork...

Seanad: Order of Business (20 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: I am addressing this from a legal point of view. People appointed to serve and look after the public interest play an important role and should be there. We may not agree with their decisions or how they arrive at them but they do serve a useful purpose. In the past few weeks some people came to me who had a loan of ¤5,000 on which the bank took a write-down of ¤2,500. Their...

Seanad: Adjournment Matters: Care of the Elderly (19 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: I thank the Minister of State for her comprehensive reply. I acknowledge the excellent work she and her Department are doing on this complex issue. The nursing homes organisations are aware of the Department's consultations with the various groups but believe more could be achieved if the groups met together with the Department as opposed to individually. Even if such meetings were only...

Seanad: Adjournment Matters: Care of the Elderly (19 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: Nursing Homes Ireland, several other organisations representing the elderly and health agencies are anxious to facilitate a longer-term planning strategy to be developed for caring for the elderly. There are also concerns about the availability of step-down facilities from hospital and comprehensive home care packages for the elderly. While the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA,...

Seanad: Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2012: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: Senator David Cullinane's comments deserve a response from this side of the House. There is an impression that the private health care sector is not providing a service. There are over 2 million appointments per annum in the private health care sector outside hospitals. Is the Senator suggesting this should be abolished and adopted into the public hospital system? I do not believe the...

Seanad: Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2012: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: There are people providing comprehensive services in the health care and insurance sectors who are very dedicated to their jobs. We need to be careful when we criticise those working in the health care sector, that it is at least constructive. I am concerned about how we are dealing with consultants. I know of seven consultants who have resigned in the past six months, two of them in...

Seanad: Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2012: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: I do not know.

Seanad: Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2012: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages (19 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: The Senator says people are only in the health system to make large sums of money. That is not true. There are very dedicated and committed individuals who are providing health care and many of them are doing much more than what their contracts require. We need to be conscious of this in any debate on the health service. We also need to be careful how we proceed on the issue of junior...

Seanad: Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: I thank the Minister for coming to the House to deal with this matter. I note the comments made by Senator Barrett about the amendments. Regarding amendment No. 4 he is talking about the Central Bank having a role. I would have no objection to that but it is not appropriate in this case. It is something that should be examined in the long term. I had my own difficulties with VHI in the...

Seanad: Order of Business (19 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: I am surprised by the comments that foreign aid is a sham. In fairness to the Government, there is a mechanism of checking and cross checking all moneys allocated by the Department or the EU. Mistakes are made and sometimes things are not done in the way they are supposed to be done. As an MEP, I employed people in Brussels as research assistants, one of whom subsequently got a job...

Seanad: Adjournment Matters: Hospital Staff (18 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: This motion relates to the appointment of a paediatric urologist. My understanding is that for children who have spina bifida and hydrocephalus there is a severe difficulty in accessing vital urology services. My understanding is that the post of paediatric urologist was advertised but not filled and that while one person was interested in the post the position was not taken up, although it...

Seanad: Adjournment Matters: Hospital Staff (18 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: Basically, this is an issue about co-ordination. A parent who contacted me said that in the Cork area there has been a failure to provide regular and comprehensive kidney and bladder assessments to ensure early detection of problems in renal function. This problem needs to be addressed immediately. The failure to address the problem will lead to increased numbers of people with renal...

Seanad: Order of Business (18 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: Much debate is taking place on social welfare and health care. On the issue of health care, Health in Ireland: Key Trends in 2012 shows the changes which have occurred. We speak negatively in respect of the health care system here but we need to look at the positive aspects. There has been a 36% reduction in the number of deaths as a result of heart attacks, stroke and certain diseases and...

Seanad: Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2012: Second Stage (13 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: It is a requirement.

Seanad: Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2012: Second Stage (13 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: The hospitals will not send back the forms without the---

Seanad: Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2012: Second Stage (13 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: The Senator is not entitled to raise this issue. It is not before the House.

Seanad: Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2012: Second Stage (13 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: I welcome the Minister to the House and thank him for bringing forward this legislation, which I welcome. We have been dealing with this issue through statutory regulations since 1994. There have been a number of regulations and pieces of legislation dealing with this issue. This is about formalising what now needs to put in place to deal with the matter into the future. It is important...

Seanad: Order of Business (13 Dec 2012)

Colm Burke: I agree with the call for a public inquiry into this murder. As a member of the legal profession, I know that one of the roles in acting is to ensure that while the role of the people employed by the state, whether it is the police or the army, is to uphold the law from the point of view of the state, the role of the solicitor is to ensure that the state, itself, is upholding the law in the...