Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would be reluctant to go up as far as Mayo because we have our international airport at Knock. I have every intention of supporting all efforts to ensure that Knock Airport is developed and that it does not suffer in any way as a result of the decision to decouple Shannon Airport. Deputy Dooley may not be alone in his views. I am sure Senator Conway will be aware of the vociferous criticism voiced by one of the leading airlines in the world - through Michael O'Leary - at the aviation conference on Monday. There is more to this story than meets the eye. It will be interesting to see how it develops. Nobody in this House or outside would do anything other than to wish the mid-west region every success with this venture.

I wish to add to Senator Norris's comments about a debate on abortion. I appreciate the House will debate the expert group's report this Thursday. However, quite frankly I do not think that will be enough. This is my personal view because my party has yet to formulate a policy on this. Ultimately, it will need to be brought before the people. We have gone to the people on two occasions in the past. It is the people who are sovereign, not the Parliament. We are not Britain which does not have a written constitution and where Parliament is sovereign. The people are sovereign in this Republic. I cannot see any way out of the dilemma now facing the Government. It can legislate until the cows come home.

The Government of the day has to deal with it but it will not be done through legislation. There are Members who have a diametrically opposed view from mine on where this debate will go and if they believe that the people will stand by and allow the legislators to decide, we will end up with abortion on demand because that is what has happened in both Britain and America where the argument moved from the physical to the psychological. Once that happened, it opened the floodgates.

Will the Leader ask the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government to come to the House early in the new year to discuss his proposals for the abolition of local development companies throughout the State? In theory it sounds great to merge services locally. I have become a convert to the concept of partnership development companies over the past decade. I started off, like many of us who served on local authorities, believing that they were shadow local authorities that had no public mandate but the volume of work they do on social inclusion and on worthy projects in every county will be lost, as will the expertise and architecture that has been built over the past decade, if they are merged with local authorities. This is a significant Government decision that cannot be allowed to be handled in the wider context of legislation.