Donie Cassidy (Fianna Fail)

Senators Fitzgerald, O'Toole and Coghlan expressed the urgency of dealing with mental health issues and spoke about the important meeting taking place today. I wish everyone well. We will give it our full support. Many of our Seanad colleagues on all sides of the House want to make their mark by doing something substantial to address the challenges facing mental health. The new Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, Deputy Moloney, also wants to make a huge change and massive difference in this area. Having served on a health board with him for quite a long time, I know he has a great deal of experience. We will do everything we can to keep mental health centre stage and to support the efforts of the Minister of State, the committee which meets today and of our colleagues in the House for whom this is a priority during their membership of the House, especially for the next three years, the remaining lifetime of this Government.

The same Senators spoke about the protection of children, particularly those with intellectual disabilities, and the need for independent monitoring. They asked for the Minister of State with responsibility for children to come back to the House to discuss this issue. We all know that he is out of the country this week and we wish him well in his deliberations in Vietnam. I will put this request to him personally on his return next weekend.

Senators O'Toole and Mary White asked for time to be allocated to the Ryan report in the House. I have given a commitment on many Orders of Business to doing anything I can to discuss it further in the House, keep it centre stage and help those trying to find out what happened to their next of kin. That is the least we can do on a humanitarian basis. I fully support the call of Senators O'Toole and Mary White. The example Senator O'Toole gave the House yesterday is a shocking and appalling example of something that we cannot stand over in any circumstances. We will do everything we possibly can to ensure this does not happen again. I commend Sister Stanislaus Kennedy's utterances yesterday. We need more of these. We will do anything we can in discussions with the leaders of the various groups in the House to allocate further time to this issue.

Senators O'Toole, Bradford, Walsh, Coghlan and Regan want time to discuss the Lisbon treaty referendum. The Taoiseach will be in the House on 9 July at 11.45 a.m. for the Bill and colleagues can avail of the opportunity. I will provide as much time as required by colleagues on that day to allow them to discuss and make known their views when the Taoiseach and various Ministers who will assist him will be in the House.

Senators Alex White, Coghlan and Hanafin raised the Government's decision to publish the report of Colm McCarthy and an bord snip nua, as it is known. I agreed with Senator Leyden yesterday when he called for it to be made public but we must await the Government's decision on it. We must also bear in mind the various examples given here this morning. We had 5% growth in April and no other country in Europe had growth for that month, and neither had China nor Japan. No other country in the western world had growth-----