Alex White (Labour)

I, too, express my sympathy to the family of Shane Geoghegan following his really shocking murder in Limerick at the weekend.

I support what has been said on the extraordinary absence of Government legislation in the House. Senator Ross is correct about this. We have debates on efficiency and relevance in respect of the public service and apparently the debate is bubbling away. Members have asked whether we should spend time considering efficiency in the public service but it may not be long before eyes start looking at this wing of the public service and deciding whether it is up to scratch in terms of its contribution. It is really extraordinary that, week in, week out, not a single Bill is brought forward. This draws attention to the debate on the efficiency and relevance of this House. We are to have statements on a number of issues this week but we do not have any opportunity to debate the issues that Members on this side of the House have been raising and on which they have been asking for a debate.

The Leader told us we were to have a rolling debate on the economy. When will it start rolling? It has not happened yet. There is a very considerable debate taking place outside the Houses on whether the banks require capitalisation. It is taking place everywhere except in the Parliament of the people. Why can we not have scrutiny in the House and debate the various arguments for and against capitalisation? It seems the banking policy rests entirely on the guarantee that was given. The remainder of the policy is a matter of keeping one's head down and hoping for the best. This is a fair definition of our national policy on the crisis that everybody else in the world recognises. We appear to believe it does not exist.

In the interest of being relevant, let me repeat Senator Fitzgerald's remarks on the importance of inviting the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to the House to justify the rationale behind the reduction in the budgets for the Equality Authority of Ireland and the Irish Human Rights Commission. The Senator also referred to the Combat Poverty Agency and I support her in this regard. Although we are told there is an economic crisis up to which everybody must face, and that the reason for the cuts in the agencies is the financial circumstances, I wonder, in light of today's report in The Irish Times by Carol Coulter, whether the real reason for the cuts has less to do with the need to make savings, necessary as they may be in the eyes of the Government, than with the fact that a great majority of the cases being brought forward by the Equality Authority of Ireland by various third parties are against State agencies. Will the Leader ask the Minister to state whether Ms Coulter is correct in concluding that the activity on the part of the Equality Authority has been an irritant to civil servants, and the opportunity afforded by the Budget was grasped by the Government to achieve something it might otherwise have wished to achieve anyway.

It is fine to have a debate with the Minister on the Criminal Assets Bureau, which is a vitally important body, but the report is on the record. The Minister might regard developments in this regard as good news and an achievement, which they are in many ways, but he does not seem to be willing to discuss issues within his remit that may be more controversial, such as the considerable reduction in the budgets for these vital agencies.