Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail)

I am finding it difficult to contain my excitement about the fact that the Taoiseach will come to the House tomorrow after 16 months. I very much welcome it and I appreciate the Leader organising it. I look forward to the debate tomorrow.

This morning on the radio we heard the announcement of 1,000 jobs at PayPal and Senators on all sides of the House welcome it. Certainly the jobs are badly needed in the greater Dublin and Louth areas. However, having listened to media reports today, it is of concern that more than 500 of these jobs will be filled by people from outside the country because of the lack of modern language skills here. There are several reasons for this and relates to not only lesser used languages such as Russian and Arabic, but also mainstream languages such as German. PayPal could not find enough people in this country with the requisite language skills to have sufficient proficiency to fill the roles. I remind Government Senators that in the most recent budget the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, abolished the modern European languages programme in primary schools. Since the programme was implemented by Deputy Micheál Martin in 1999, thousands of children at 550 primary schools went through it but it no longer exists. We need a proper debate in September on proficiency in European and other languages. Alarm bells are going off in my head over the fact that 50% of the PayPal jobs had to be sourced abroad. I asked the Leader to arrange this debate.

I propose an amendment to the Order of Business that the Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, come to the House to discuss promises he has made since becoming Minister and in the run up to the election. We know very well the promises he made with regard to Sligo cancer care services. These were specific promises which he has broken. We also know the promises he and the Taoiseach made about retaining services at the Roscommon accident and emergency department. I welcome representatives of the cross-party action group for the Community Hospital of the Assumption in Thurles and concerned citizens to the Gallery. Not only has this hospital lost 20 respite beds, but 37% of its hospital beds have also been lost while more than 300 people in the area are waiting for beds. What is worse is that on 9 November, the Minister, at a meeting with the group attended by Deputy Coonan and the Minister of State, Deputy Alan Kelly, promised the beds would be reinstated by the end of January 2012. This was a specific promise. I want the Minister to come to the House to explain whether Deputy Coonan and the Minister of State, Deputy Kelly, are incorrect. Did the Minister make this promise? It was very clear to those who were there. Why have the beds not been reinstated since January 2012?

We are used to broken promises. On numerous occasions prior to the news coming out two weeks ago I raised my concerns about the Minister for Health having a conflict of interest in the nursing home sector. I stated this six months ago. How can the Minister tell a group of elected councillors and people in the community that he will reinstate beds by the end of January 2012 at a meeting in Leinster House on 9 November 2011 but now deny he said it? Is the group lying, is the Minister lying, or did Deputy Coonan and the Minister of State, Deputy Kelly, pick up wrongly what the Minister said? I will tell the House who is wrong in this. The amendment I propose is that the Minister for Health come to the House to explain why another promise has been broken and ask him with the greatest degree of urgency to fulfil the promise he made to the community of Thurles on 9 November 2011 that he would reinstate the beds. We will accept nothing short of that.