Joe O'Toole (Independent)

No. 15 on the Order Paper, the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Bill 2006, is in my name and that of the Independent Senators. The Leader will recall that the Bill was to deal with the question of seeking warrants for the continued interrogation of suspects who walked free because they were in court while the issues of a case were being discussed. The object of the Bill is to ensure that the time spent arguing the case in court was not counted as part of the 24 or 48 hours. I got a response from the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform indicating that he is sympathetic to the objective of the Bill, believes it needs to be dealt with and would be disposed towards dealing with it in the forthcoming criminal justice Bill. I will talk to him about that and this is a positive response on the issue. The House generally was in favour of what I was trying to achieve in this regard.

The most threatening news of the day is that we are facing up to 15 years of plenty in terms of the NCB report. While that must be seen in a positive light, we need to ensure we direct and harness it. Returning to first principles, the most fundamental basis and foundation of any economy is a well-educated, healthy population. That is where we need to begin in terms of our infrastructure, or at least it needs to be given an equal footing with other areas. We should fast-track the infrastructure not only for broadband and road and rail, which are crucial, but also the health and medical infrastructure.

In that respect, I wish to repeat a point I made last night. We jump up and down here in outrage regularly on the basis of gun crime and people dying by the gun or as a result of road accidents, but there are more unnecessary deaths among women from cancer each year. There are twice, if not three times, as many deaths among women from cancer as the cumulative number of deaths resulting from gun crime and road accidents. The lives of at least 1,000 women a year could be saved and they could be alive if we were to ensure the roll-out of the cancer screening programme to all parts of rural and provincial Ireland. The current position is disgraceful. We are more agitated about avian flu and the possibility of an outbreak of SARS in China than we are about burying many of our own people unnecessarily year after year. We need to address that. The Minister for Health and Children should come to the House and it should be pointed out to her that this is an infrastructural issue which is hugely important. This issue is only one aspect of health care — there are many more. However, this is one aspect which, if addressed, could have an immediate impact and bring about positive results. I ask that we discuss this matter.