Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I second Senator Brian Hayes's proposal for an amendment to the Order of Business. It is increasingly clear that the concept of a regulator was introduced to pursue not the well-being of consumers but an ideological agenda. In this instance the regulator has recommended the opposite of what the ideology demanded so the regulator is ignored.

There is a strong case for an intelligent discussion about the sorts of competition that work well in health care and those that result in the inflated health budget of the United States, leaving it with the worst infant mortality rate in the developed world and a lower life expectancy than most of the developed world. The objective evidence is that brutal market forces do not work in the health system. We are entitled to know why we are being driven in a direction opposed to the interests of most people.

In the case of what has happened to the unfortunate people from County Mayo, the law must be upheld because poor people would have no rights without it. Repeatedly, however, the use of injunctions resulting in imprisonment is almost inevitably a case of the powerful against the powerless which raises fundamental questions. The multinational involved in this case has an unsavoury reputation as anybody from Nigeria can confirm. It also attempted to dump its waste rigs in the North Sea.

There is a serious issue about disproportionate power and how it is used. We have seen the most appalling abuses by powerful people of planning and other regulations, but few of them are punished. Five people want only to prevent somebody using their land.

As an engineer I can say there is no such thing as an absolutely safe process least of all where the risk is taken not by the company but by the people through whose land this pipeline will run. I am not scaremongering but if anybody says this is absolutely safe he or she is telling a lie. There is no such thing as absolute safety, therefore, these families are entitled to whatever reassurances they need or to be left alone if they wish. That they should end up in prison is a disgrace.

I deliberately paused for three seconds to remind the House that in those three seconds a child died somewhere in the world from poverty.