David Norris (Independent)

I wish the Cathaoirleach could bring the health service to order. The aforementioned women was basically sentenced to death by our system for the crime of being poor and unable to afford health service treatment through private means. That should not be tolerated. It is a reproach to us, as representatives of the people, that the life expectancy of those with cystic fibrosis is ten years shorter here in the Republic than it is 90 miles up the road in the North of Ireland.

I call for a debate on the Abbey Theatre, an issue on which I have put down a motion. I have just learned from the radio that the Government is proposing to provide €750,000 to refurbish the theatre's foyer. As it has already announced its intention to shift the theatre from its historic site, that seems an absurd and imprudent waste of money. Let us have a debate about the appropriate site for the theatre. Let us not have it whisked off to some middle class financial services centre on the docks which the decent people of Dublin will not bother to attend. The spirit of Sean O'Casey would turn in his grave at the idea that this historic site is being abandoned and the theatre is not being relocated to the Carlton site. Why are the provisions of the Constitution that provide for the common good not applied? Why are those buccaneering capitalists not being pushed off the Carlton site so that it can be used it for the good of the people of Ireland? Andrews Lane Theatre is gone and the Olympia Theatre has been turned back into a music hall, which means there is almost nothing in the city centre. What will happen to the site of the Abbey Theatre? Why will the Government not take up the offer of the late Daithí Hanly who kept the stones of the entire building? They are available to the people. Rebuild the old Abbey and make it a site for a theatre museum in a city that has so often celebrated drama.