Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy Leader will see from the agenda today and on Thursday, vast swathes of time are available to this House to do far more important things. There is one item after the Order of Business today and on Thursday. Will the Deputy Leader follow up with the Whips office the position of this House in regard to scrutinising proposed EU legislation and statutory instruments from Ministers? I put it to her that the expertise is in this House and many Members on both sides have raised this issue. We are ready, willing and able to do so, and it should be done. This is something on which we should insist in this session. I would be grateful if the Deputy Leader followed up that point, as I intend to raise it again.

On four occasions, I have raised the need for a debate on perinatal care. Before the summer recess, many of us attended an excellent presentation by families whose children died very soon after birth. I received a commitment from the Leader that we would have a debate. I do not want to see this move to the next session, so will the Deputy Leader ask when that debate will be scheduled?

This question relates to mortgage resolution measures about which I have asked over the past number of weeks. The banks were supposed to submit plans on mortgage resolution measures to the Central Bank by 30 September. We have heard nothing since. Will the Deputy Leader confirm that has actually happened? Does the Department of Finance know what is in them? When will those potential mortgage resolution measures be made public?

Finally and most importantly, may I ask if the Deputy Leader raised with the Minister for Health the issue of home help and home care package cuts? We discussed this at length in the House last week. I tabled an amendment to the Order of Business which, unfortunately, was defeated by the Government side. The Minister for Health and not the HSE is directly in charge. Some 450,000 hours will be taken out of the system between now and Christmas on top of 500,000 hours which were cut earlier this year. We need the Minister for Health and Children to come to the House to explain the situation. Is he telling us the HSE is honestly going to assess 11 million hours between now and Christmas to see who can do without the hours?

I am certain all of us are receiving calls, letters and e-mails from constituents that their home care packages and home help hours are being cut arbitrarily. The family of a blind 88 year old man in Swords contacted me last week. He has had his home help hours reduced by three hours and he was advised of this by a letter from Fingal home care. There was no discussion or no review.

What is happening in this area? Are we protecting the front line service and the most vulnerable in our society - the elderly, the infirm and people with disabilities? Has the Deputy Leader lobbied the Minster for Health on this matter? Will she arrange time next week for this issue to be debated openly and honestly with the Minister for Health? If we do not do that, we are doing the public a grave disservice.