Brendan Ryan (Labour)

There is a particular irony about the fact these senior people claim overtime while at the same time they attempt to force through contract changes for doctors and nurses whereby they will work seven days per week, 24 hours per day rotas for a given salary and without any overtime. These changes are referred to as new work practices which are supposed to be the fashion. While the people at the coalface are being told overtime is an old fashioned idea, those attempting to force through these changes claim it.

Like Senator O'Toole, I would not have an argument with the salaries if people were doing the job, which is a good question. If one were running an organisation as large as a health service properly, I would not take issue with the level of reward. However, I take issue with people claiming privileges which they are attempting, by every means of negotiation and use of public relations, to take from others. It is hypocrisy on a grand scale and it is not the way to create the proper ethos.

Yesterday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of a Polish woman who was refused an abortion. I am not attempting to make an issue of this but we cannot spend the next ten years with our heads buried in the sand pretending this is not happening. This was not a ruling of the European Court of Justice but of the European Court of Human Rights and, therefore, the famous protocol to the Maastricht treaty is of no significance. I would like a member of Government to come to the House to give us an authoritative view on how that decision will impact on the way we regulate this very difficult and emotional area. The one thing we should not do is hope it will go away because I can assure the House it will not.

Three cases, which have been taken by three Irish women, are due to come up and they may well produce a decision. We would be better off to deal with this now sensibly and sanely and without recrimination and to recognise the fact that perhaps we will have to deal with a regime some of us might find distasteful.

I welcome the fact that at long last a new copy of the rules of the road is being issued today, although only 12 years late. I hope that once it is issued, all the rules of the road will be enforced because not a single truck on the road observes the speed limits. How many people have come across a heavy goods vehicle, HGV, on a motorway doing only 80 km/h? The answer is "Nobody". If a HGV were doing 80 km/h, we would probably think there was something wrong with it. HGVs are supposed to have speed limiters on them but they do not because they are perfectly capable of travelling at speeds in excess of the speed limits. Trucks are involved in three times as many fatal accidents as their numbers on the road would suggest. Now that we have an up-to-date version of the rules of the road, perhaps they will be enforced.