Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

That is an issue we must consider urgently.

Another problem cropping up is the quality of junior doctors. I have raised this issue in the House before. A number of junior doctors have been placed under extra supervision by their consultants because their English is not of the required standard. I am not talking about the quality of their medical education. However, there are concerns about the standard of their English. What hope do these doctors have of conversing with sick patients from a culturally different background when they cannot speak English to a sufficient level?

When we talk about consensus in the House, we should be careful not to settle for a bar stool consensus. We should not have a knee-jerk response to narrow discussions. There is a need for us to think this through. There are issues in that consensus goes against what some consider to be our democratic set-up. There are also concerns about the agenda behind its promotion. We on this side of the House will take a pragmatic approach to how the country should be run. We have stated, as Senator Fitzgerald said, that we agree with many of the parameters suggested; I see this as consensus. However, we will not be railroaded into a silly little grouping such as a HSE forum to discuss the future of the country.