Ivana Bacik (Independent)

In keeping with the Leader's practice, I will respond only to those colleagues who are present in the Chamber. Senator Marc MacSharry referred to the Aviva Ireland jobs announcement this morning. We all welcome the reduction in the number of redundancies and the additional jobs for Galway, as also referred to by Senator Michael Mullins. I absolutely agree with Senator MacSharry on the need for the Government to engage on an ongoing basis, through its agencies, with large employers. We would all commend the great work being done by IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland in this regard. We see the results of that in the numbers of job creation announcements in recent months, particularly through foreign direct investment, including from companies like SAP, PayPal, Apple and so on.

The Senator also called for a debate on mental health, to be attended by the Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly. We all welcome the achievement of the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, in ensuring ring-fenced funding for mental health services. She attended debates in this House in the first and second week after Christmas on the issue. I am happy to facilitate another debate and will speak to the Leader in that regard. However, we might leave it for a little time given we have had one relatively recently.