Brendan Ryan (Labour)

We, as Members, should value having a debate in this House on something as potentially controversial as the Hanly report. We should not turn it into a replica of the kind of debate one might have in the Dáil. I do not wish to cast any aspersions on the other House, but it sometimes seems to have more heat than light in its debates, perhaps because of the more intense political conflict.

It seems there are different views on the Hanly report in all the political parties. This may be partly attributed to geography and partly to perspective. No rational person could argue with the presentation on the Hanly report made by the Minister for Health and Children, who stated that investment in the quality of service the country needs cannot be uniformly spread among every small town. Nobody could argue about the need to have specialist centres of high quality.

I should have declared an interest at the beginning of my speech, as I do in all debates of this kind, because I am married to a woman who is, at least intermittently, a hospital consultant. I read a headline somewhere about somebody looking for €500,000 per year and I was planning my retirement on the strength of it. However, I never anticipate that sum or believe it will appear before I retire under the normal process of ageing and elections.