Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

On reviews, I stated earlier that I have an ambition, following the general election when I hope to return to the Department of Health and Children, to establish in this Department — my officials are probably having heart attacks behind me — what we did in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment where we put a group together to examine company law and report every other year stating the need to modernise in certain areas, to do the work and, therefore, make the legislation easy.

On regulation, when we get the nurses and midwives modern legislation in place — the relevant legislation is 20 years old — and the dentists legislation, it would be no harm to have a group representing the different regulatory bodies who would look at it from time to time so that we do not wait. In the case of the Medical Practitioners Act, the legislation dates from 1978. In this case, the Acts date from 1875 and 1962, which is crazy. The nurses legislation is 20 years old, which is not so bad, but still a great deal has changed. We must have a more frequent way of being able to change and modernise legislation, and that would be a good day's work.

The code of conduct must have the consent of the Minister. The Minister must have the view of the Competition Authority and, therefore, it would be open to the Minister to state that he or she would not consent if he or she felt what was being suggested was not reasonable.

For clarity and accuracy, I say to Senator Ryan that when the negotiations were under way, it was the legal representative of the IPU who brought to the attention of the negotiators their legal advice that stated that the wholesalers cannot negotiate with us because it affects them as a third party. It was not the Competition Authority who highlighted that we must stop here. It was the lawyers for the IPU. When the Attorney General and the HSE's lawyers got it — I remember getting the advice of the Attorney General — they all agreed that the IPU was correct. That is what happened.