Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

The Mahon tribunal was raised in this House yesterday. That tribunal is an institution that was established by the Oireachtas and when it comes under sustained attack from within and without, we should set aside time to discuss it in this House. Senator McDonald, who is from my constituency in County Wexford, attacked the tribunal regarding the leaking of information. Senator McDonald might not realise that this information is freely available to every person who comes before the tribunal and that anybody could leak that information. There is a serious need to discuss this if Members are not fully informed about how the tribunal works.

A former Minister for Education and Science made an incredibly serious accusation in the Dáil last night. She said that the lingering animosity of civil servants is what is blocking the provision of ABA to autistic children in our educational system. That is an incredibly serious charge to make against the Civil Service and the Leader should take it up with the Deputy in order that we can get a reply in this House as soon as possible. It is unbelievable that someone would say the civil servants are responsible for the lack of services to children in our educational system, and for this to be widely reported across the media.

We should also return to the debate on pharmacists, because this is starting to turn into something from a Monty Python film. Many members of the Government are acting as if they are disconnected from the decisions made at Cabinet level. There is a sub-committee in the Cabinet made up of the Taoiseach, the Minister for Health and Children, the Minister for Finance and one other Minister, who made the decision that is now being implemented by the HSE. The Leader of the House should get a clear answer from the Taoiseach on this matter and stop the games that are being played. The Taoiseach wants cheaper drugs to be available but he does not particularly care whether the patient can get access to them. That is what is happening, it has nothing to do with the way the debate on the issue has been structured so far.

All Members of the House should be aware that the provisions of the birds directive are coming into force and they directly affect Wexford town and the south Wexford coastline. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is implementing the directive rigidly and it will have a major impact on not only the Wexford coastline but a large number of other areas across the country, predominantly coastlines and riverways. If it is implemented as rigidly as it is in County Wexford, it will sterilise all future development in the coastal areas and will have a major impact on the social and environmental activities in those areas.

There is a serious need to debate this issue. The deadline in this respect for County Wexford is tomorrow and I am sure the impact of this measure in other parts of the country will be equally draconian. I ask the Leader to invite the Minister to come to the House as soon as possible to discuss the impact of this directive before we make a hames of another EU directive. Given that a referendum on the EU reform treaty will be held in a few months' time, the accusation that Europe is bad for this country will continue to prevail. I heard an accusation made at a public meeting last Tuesday night to the effect that it was not the Fianna Fáil Minister who signed this directive into law in 1998 who was the cause of this problem, nor a former Minister who signed the initial directive in 1985, rather the fault lay with the European Union. We need to have a serious debate on this issue before the forthcoming referendum is lost on misinformation of this kind circulating among the public.