Brendan Ryan (Labour)

It is probably a commentary on the length of time that Senator O'Toole and I have been here that I was going to raise this delightful idea from our Canadian colleagues regarding people being Senators for life until they reach the age of 75. Perhaps the OECD would try to persuade them to continue until they reach 85 years of age.

Senator Brian Hayes raised the issue of the horrible accidents in County Donegal. I have raised this issue on many occasions and have tried to do something about the fact that virtually no heavy goods vehicles on our main roads observe the legal speed limit. Those vehicles are supposed to have speed governors fitted. When I come across these vehicles on the road, I record their details and write to the companies involved. Every one of them writes back with a hand-on-heart assurance that speed governors are fitted to their vehicles. All of these trucks cruise along at 60 mph even though their speed governors are supposed to ensure that they cannot travel at more than 55 mph. The hand-on-heart assurances I receive inform me that there is no problem but it is usually stated in the final paragraph that it is possible the driver removed the fuse from the governor, thereby bypassing it. What is the point of having a technological device meant to regulate the speed of a heavy goods vehicle if it can be bypassed by simply removing a fuse? Either it is there or it is not. I will not allow companies to put the blame on their employees. It is up to the companies to ensure their vehicles operate in compliance with the law. The excessive speed of heavy goods vehicles on our inadequate roads is a contributory factor to accidents. The statistics show they represent 3% of all registered vehicles which are involved in 10% of fatal accidents. That has nothing to do with the awful tragedy in Donegal but it is one of the contributors to the slaughter on our roads.

I wish to ask the Leader about two issues I previously raised; one was in regard to aeroplanes landing here that apparently do not have to provide manifests of who or what is on board, and how that is reconcilable with our law and with international obligations; and the second matter related to the absence of country of origin labelling on products coming from some of the most nefarious and obnoxious countries in the world, including Burma in particular. The Leader was to find out about those matters and I am sure she is endeavouring to do so but I just want to remind her.

A long and serious debate in this House on health is overdue. Over the weekend the Tánaiste and the chief executive of the Health Service Executive announced that 3,000 new acute beds were no longer on the agenda because we did not need them. It was decided after years that we did not need them because, apparently, other countries survive with fewer. This morning we discovered there is something close to chaos in the ambulance service in Dublin. The Tánaiste has not taken any decision on a report which she has had for six months, which should have been implemented by now, to try to sort out the fact that there are two parallel ambulance services. On occasion, two ambulances have arrived at the same incident because they do not communicate very well.

The Competition Authority is involved in a daft exercise to try to get away from a fixed level of consultants' fees, as if sick people would go shopping around for the cheapest consultant when they desperately need the best. We are getting involved in a succession of issues such as the partial privatisation of hospitals and other such matters. Last week many health board employees received a letter telling them of the wonderful computer system they had, which was very good at organising their salaries and what they could do if they had a problem. The health service is in a state of complete chaos. Nobody is responsible. Nobody is taking decisions. Adequate time must be provided for a major debate on the state of the health service.