Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Contrary to what people might imagine, I do not carry any ideological baggage about State ownership per se, nor about the opposite. We must learn from our experience and should do what we believe will work. Manifestly, the privatisation of Telecom Éireann did not work in terms of providing us with the scale of investment and dynamism that we wanted. Eircom is now being lauded by various international agencies as being a wonderfully managed company because of how it can outsmart the regulator on every occasion. That is not a great advertisement for whatever was supposed to be the advantage of its privatisation.

I am still not persuaded as to why Aer Lingus should be privatised. I have the feeling that the rancid meat in the middle has infected the whole sandwich and we are talking about ideology taking over. I would like the Minister to come to the House to explain to me the business case for the privatisation of Aer Lingus because I have not heard it made yet. Perhaps there is a good case, but I have not yet been persuaded.

The point was made to me this morning that when John Gilligan comes out of prison, he will be able to open a pharmacy. Nobody will be in a position to stop him because there are no regulations relating to the sorts of people who are fit to run pharmacies. We have no way of stopping unfit pharmacists from continuing to operate, as no suitable regulations are in place. No new legislation in this regard has been passed since 1875, even though further legislation has been promised for many years.

We always seem to wait until a tragedy takes place before we discover that we need to update our legislation. We are now talking about changing the legislation relating to the medical profession as a matter of urgency, on foot of the tragic events in Drogheda. Will we wait until a tragedy takes place in the pharmaceutical sector before we amend the legislation that regulates it? Can the Leader ask the Tánaiste to state when legislation to regulate pharmacies and pharmacists will be introduced? Such legislation, which has been promised since early last year and has been needed for the past 30 years, is hopelessly and sadly overdue.

We should not allow people who have been convicted of drug offences to sell legal drugs legitimately after they leave prison. I am aware of the case of a person who was struck off the register of pharmacists in Britain but then started to do some locum work as a pharmacist in my home city of Cork. He was entitled to work as a pharmacist in Ireland even though he had been disbarred from working as a pharmacist in Britain. This is not a trivial matter.

Given that pharmacists deal with extremely dangerous materials and help to protect us against misuse, abuse and mistakes, the least we can do is to put in place a modern regulatory environment in which they can operate. The Government and the Department of Health and Children should do some proactive work in this regard by introducing the appropriate legislation instead of waiting to react to crises.