David Norris (Independent)

I join colleagues in asking for the Minister for Health and Children to come to the House to discuss the pharmacy issue. I am once again in receipt of very detailed e-mails quoting facts and figures from pharmacies, principally small pharmacies throughout the country. I have no sympathy for the international chains. The Minister is partly responsible, through legislation, for introducing a two-tier system in pharmacy as well as in medicine. What about the pharmacies in rural areas and in working class suburbs? The countryside is already largely deprived of post offices, buses and pubs. Now the chemists may fizzle out. We need to review the issue.

The Criminal Justice (Amendment) Bill will come to this House next week, which will be absolutely useless because no amendments will be taken. In the aftermath of the Phoenix Park murders by the Invincibles at the end of the 19th century, an attempt was made in Britain to introduce just such a law and the Lord Chief Justice, Baron Pallas, said that any attempt to impose upon the duty of trying crime without juries would impair confidence in justice.

I listened to the news this morning. In a case in Limerick, Gary Campion has just been sentenced. This was adduced as evidence to show why this Bill is necessary. It is completely the reverse. Mr. Campion was rightly convicted by a jury in Limerick. We are talking about getting rid of juries. This is a fundamental strike at human rights. We really need to discuss it properly. Everyone is opposed to this kind of criminal warfare. Those involved are a real blot on society and people rightly despise them. They hold people up to terror, but we must use a surgical approach to them. There is no point in using hysteria as a cloak for diminishing human rights. Let us have a proper debate and not have all these irrelevancies.