Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

This Easter week the Irish Human Rights Commission launched its first report on the disability sector. That report revealed serious gaps in services for 77 profoundly disabled adults in the Pope John Paul II centre in Ballybane, Galway. It took a 2003 RTE report to show that most adults in the centre shared rooms fit for children and that they could not move. This report shows their human rights have been infringed. Why do we continue to treat our weakest so badly when we let the rich walk on water and when our Government decides on behalf of the taxpayer to bail out Anglo Irish Bank and to write off its directors' debts? There is something seriously immoral at the core of this value system.

One of the main recommendations in the Irish Human Rights Commission report was the need for increased speech and language therapy needed for eating, swallowing and to prevent choking to keep these profoundly disabled adults alive. They get speech and language therapy one day per week. The father of an autistic person in the centre told me at the weekend that he received more speech and language therapy in 1960s Ireland for his stammer.

As a nation, our value system is seriously screwed up. We have got it all wrong. Will the Leader arrange an urgent debate on this Irish Human Rights Commission report? Questions must be answered. Why did the HSE and the Brothers of Charity ignore the needs of these profoundly disabled adults and allow them to live in what their parents call haunting conditions? Why has it taken this report for the HSE to say it will co-operate? What does the word of the HSE mean anyway? It means very little. Last week it moved to cover up my revelation that UCHG did not have the €12 million for cancer drugs. Who is accountable when the Minister for Health and Children will not answer?

Meanwhile back at the bank, the boys continue to play with our nation, thanks to Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. The news is that Anglo Irish Bank has posted the biggest losses in Irish corporate history of €12.7 billion. I have received telephone calls about this and I bet the Leader has too. The citizens want to know why Fianna Fáil and the Green Party are prepared to bring our nation to its knees to save a failed and fraudulent bank in which three investigations are taking place simultaneously into corporate irregularities and criminal activities.

Of equal concern is the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Citizen are owed €2.8 billion by the Quinn group. What is the Quinn group's obligations to the taxpayer?