Mary O'Rourke (Fianna Fail)

I neglected to say that Members can share their time during the debate in the early afternoon.

Senator Brian Hayes raised the issue of tribunals. I know he raised the legislation on tribunals as a lead-in to his major point but I have the information about legislation on tribunals of inquiry with me. It will be published during this session by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and we will seek to have it introduced in this House. Senator Brian Hayes then called for legislation on consultants' costs. I think he said €100 million had been paid in such costs and that there should be legislation to govern this. I do not know if this is anticipated; other interesting comments were also made on that matter.

Senator Brian Hayes also asked about the undocumented Irish, which is the shorthand term we use. We discussed a debate on this issue this morning. The debate will be scheduled for either the coming week or the following week. We want to invite the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, to the House but his diary looks fairly full next week. We had already asked for this but I thank the Senator for reminding me. I accompanied some members of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs to Washington D.C., and we discussed the matter with Senator John McCain and others. Two Bills were mooted at the time but the current Bill won through. It contains a very good safeguard that allows Irish people to come back home to go to family events and return to the US. It is a very worthwhile Bill and Senator McCain has asked that the Houses of the Oireachtas support it. He would use this support in his promulgation of the Bill, which would be a good idea. We will hopefully have the debate next week. I will know later on.

Senator O'Toole raised the Irish Ferries debate and IBEC's role in it. I find IBEC's comments on this issue very disquieting. There may be faults on both sides but we do not know. We need to have a debate on the matter, rather than it being a brief item on the Adjournment. We will try to arrange a debate for next week.

Senator Ryan raised the issue of the Bill proposed by Senator McCain. We hope to consider the Bill next week. I thank the Senator for his support in this matter.

Senator Ryan said also that although there are more people in employment there is less revenue buoyancy from that employment. Thankfully, quite a number of people on low incomes have escaped the tax net following the last budget and I hope the same will be true of the forthcoming budget. That might explain this anomaly although I have not seen that aspect written about. The Senator, however, seeks an explanation.

I fully agree with Senator Ryan's point about alcohol advertising. All inducements to either smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol should be muted. Codes of practice do not work for anything. They sound wonderful in theory, and I suppose everyone adopting them does so with good intentions but these whittle away.

It was a good idea to curb alcohol advertising because one sees on television images of cool young people going out drinking. There are also the advertisements sponsored by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government showing the outcome when someone who drinks and then drives. I am surprised one such advertisement has been dropped. I do not know whether it is a result of lobbying or something else.

Senator Morrissey wants the Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Deputy Callely, to come to the House. Think-ins are a good idea. Some Senators had a think-in recently but I do not know the outcome.