Ivana Bacik (Independent)

The Minister for Social Protection will be in the House in two weeks time to discuss a major Bill. I join Senator O'Brien in expressing sympathy to the family of the man shot dead in Clondalkin. It is sad to see in one week two such murders being committed in Dublin.

I welcome very much the all party motion, initiated by Senator John Crown, on Bahrain. It is most appropriate that the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade comes to the Seanad at some stage, perhaps before the end of the session to discuss what can be done from an Irish perspective about the situation in Bahrain. All Members are deeply concerned about the treatment of the doctors who are being prosecuted because they assisted in giving medical treatment to people.

I ask the Leader for a debate on the reports of the abuse in a south Dublin nursing home and the wider questions those reports raise. The Irish Times today carries a report from HIQA that residents of a south Dublin nursing home were subjected to abuse. There are wider issues, not only about treatment of the elderly in nursing homes, which is itself very serious but also about the treatment of whistleblowers. One of the commitments in the programme for Government was to introduce a Bill protecting whistleblowers and this report shows the necessity for that.

May I respond to a comment made by Senator Mullen yesterday? I would not normally respond to personal comments but he asked for a response on something I was reported in the newspapers as having said on male genital mutilation during the World Atheists Convention last weekend. Perhaps not surprisingly, Senator Mullen, was not present.

My paper was on another topic but I mentioned the Bill on female genital mutilation and somebody in the audience asked me what I thought about male genital mutilation, his words. I said I thought it was of a different scale and of a different order entirely to female genital mutilation but personally I do not believe that the cutting of a child's genitals for anything other than medical reasons is ever justified. I stand over that and I have had a good deal of support from individual members of the public on that stance. As a person who can barely bear to watch my children being vaccinated for very good reasons -