Alex White (Labour)

I agree with Senator Fitzgerald that Senators should examine how the House does its business. If the other House holds a debate on its role, the Seanad should certainly have such a debate on how it orders its business and addresses issues of concern.

I also agree with the Senator's views on a point I raised in the House yesterday regarding public and political accountability. The meeting we had this morning, while most useful to people in terms of issues being raised, was an extraordinary spectacle in a modern democracy. In a crucial public service with a massive public budget voted from taxpayers' money — the health service — we saw a lack of fit between political representatives and the service providers. Political accountability has been deliberately removed from the health service to provide an alibi for the Government on issues of concern and to allow the Taoiseach, Ministers and others to argue that the health service is not their problem. It is the Government's problem and one from which it cannot walk away. What we saw this morning was an extraordinary spectacle. I do not say this to criticise anybody but it is strange in a modern democracy to have politicians raising their hands, as it were, to ask questions of the chief executive of a State agency. This matter must be addressed.

On another issue, there was a rare outbreak of all-party agreement in the other House during a recent debate on undocumented Irish people living in the United States. I am sure Senators support the resolution agreed in the Dáil calling for action to be taken to regularise the status of thousands of undocumented Irish people living in the United States and noting the precarious position in which these people find themselves.

While I am aware, through experiences in my family, that undocumented Irish people often live in a legal limbo in the US for many years, we cannot forever ignore the fact that we do not have to walk too far from this building to see very similar circumstances. Thousands of undocumented illegal immigrants face precisely the same sort of precarious life, isolation and exploitation. We cannot, on the one hand, state that we are actively committed to a certain course of action in the United States, one which I support, while forever ignoring the situation on our own doorstep. Perhaps the Deputy Leader would request the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to come to the House to explain the reason he is so quick to reject proposals, such as that made by the Migrants Rights Centre Ireland yesterday, to provide a bridging visa for people in Ireland who face the same precarious, isolating and, in many cases, sad human dilemma that Irish people have faced overseas.