Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail)

I agree with Senator O'Toole in regard to the pending An Post strike set for next Wednesday. I appeal to all parties to come together to negotiate a settlement and to avoid industrial action. The point was made on RTE's "Morning Ireland" programme this morning that pensions increases have not been paid to postal workers. To be fair, they have a strong case and there will have to be negotiation. Senators will remember the major strike of 1979, within a few years of which the new bodies, An Post and Telecom Éireann, were established. No good will come of the current dispute unless negotiations take place and we should unite in calling on both parties to come together under the auspices of the Labour Relations Commission, which should intervene.

Second Stage of the Health (Amendment) Bill 2004 will be taken next week. Is it intended that all Stages of the Bill would be passed by the end of the session? It is important that the consultative forums for elected representatives be set up. This would help to deflect the type of negative publicity in regard to University College Hospital, Galway, which aired on "Morning Ireland" this morning without a rebuttal from the Western Health Board. I contacted the health board and requested it to respond speedily to any of the politically motivated allegations which make it to the airwaves before they are clarified.

If the consultative forums were established, public representatives would at least have an opportunity to raise such issues and obtain clarification before they come into the public domain. It was very demoralising for the excellent staff of UCHG to be embroiled in this morning's unsavoury publicity in regard to a patient who allegedly had to ring his wife in Tuam to get a drip reattached to his arm in a particularly isolated ward at UCHG. As a former chairman of the health board, I know how difficult it can be for staff to listen to such allegations when a matter is not immediately clarified. Public representatives should be able to clarify such matters through direct dialogue with the health board before they are broadcast.