John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

Senator Frances Fitzgerald called for a debate on the High Court decision in the case of Pamela Izevbekhai and her daughters. As somebody who holds pretty conservative views on immigration, I believe this country has badly failed that family. There is still time to put that wrong right. I admire the courage of that woman in trying to protect her daughters from the possibility of mutilation if repatriated. We should have a debate at the earliest possible opportunity.

I concur with many of the comments made on the Roscommon incest case. I do not disagree with most of what was said in the House. Senator Mullen said the courts were tardy. As far as I understand the facts of the case and what happened over the past seven or eight years, it seems the Government and the agencies of the State have been tardy and not the courts.

Many years ago, the former Taoiseach gave a commitment that a constitutional referendum on the rights of children would be held within a couple of months of his announcement but that has not happened. The HSE has given insufficient resources to prevent such cases as that in Roscommon. I share the views of other Senators that there should be no HSE involvement in the inquiry being conducted.

Senator Alex White and others spoke about the economic debate scheduled for later today. I agree that there is not much point having that debate if we do not have the facts on what the Government is speaking to the social partners about. That is the fatal flaw in the system of social partnership.

I was the Opposition spokesperson on finance in this House for a number of years and I constantly raised with Ministers, and Deputy Cowen when he was the Minister for Finance, the need for the involvement of the Oireachtas in the social partnership process. The Seanad, when it was set up, was to be a form of social partnership, but the vocational panels did not work as originally planned. We should have a full role in the Government's plan for economic recovery, which we know nothing about other than the small amounts of information that have been leaked to the media and are speculated upon in the newspapers. Other than that, we have very little detail on the Government's plan.

I ask the Leader to provide time at the earliest possible opportunity for an urgent debate on pensions and pension provision. The issue was raised before the House rose for the Christmas recess in regard to the difficulties of Waterford Crystal and the problems workers, and former workers, are experiencing in terms of what is essentially a black hole in the company funds for their pensions. A large number of people who work in the private sector are in defined benefit schemes. There may be cases similar to that in Waterford Crystal and there could be serious repercussions in the coming months as the number of redundancies continues to rise. I do not see any prospect of that position changing in the short term and I ask the Leader to arrange for a debate on pensions at the earliest possible opportunity.