Michael McCarthy (Labour)

As the insurance policy on the vessel is worth €3.8 million and it would cost €2 million to refloat it, an economic case cannot be made to ignore the issue. The national sail training programme has been called into question because the Asgard II was the main training vessel. Are we to take it that the programme has been abandoned? Is the sinking of the vessel being used as an excuse to abandon that programme, which has trained thousands of young people to sail? It is disgraceful that the Minister has not made a decision on the issue.

Every year, the commercialisation of Christmas gets worse. Blatant Christmas advertisements were broadcast on television in October this year. That over-commercialisation completely misses the point of Christmas. In this context, the decision to ban the Veritas advertisement was bizarre. The Broadcasting Complaints Commission needs to reconsider its role if it continues to ban such advertisements while allowing Christmas advertising to begin in October. I respectfully suggest that it should ban Libertas rather than Veritas.