Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is very nice to echo Senator Kelly's statement. All accolades are delivered in Ms Harkin's direction. She has so much energy she could light up a good part of the national grid; we would not need any wind turbines then. I thank Ms Harkin for that. We have a problem with European legislation, and legislation in general. As Senator MacSharry said, we have a system which is very dominated by the Cabinet, which I fear is entirely dominated by the permanent government. When we can get it to work, it works very well. The Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, sat in Ms Harkin's chair and amended the Personal Insolvency Bill approximately 70 times - people such as Sinn Féin proposed lots of amendments. He was willing to sit down and listen and work through it, as Ms Harkin does in the European Parliament, line by line and not call on people to resign as in the Punch and Judy approach. Last night he accepted a motion from Senator Mary Ann O'Brien on charities and he is working on that. The Minister has amended the taxi Bill 80 times. People say you do not do that, there will be legal cases here and in Europe and one did not know what kind of Bill one has accumulated by incurring all these law cases. There was one during the week on occupational pensions not being properly transposed in the case of the Waterford Crystal workers.

We need scrutiny, checks and balances. It is not just the way people think about matters here. It is designed to do that. Sometimes I think the Dáil is a bear pit. Regarding continuous reruns of the last election, most of us would not be here if things had not gone wrong, and we are here to correct that. Some of the rest is like the Thierry Henry hand ball; you cannot keep rerunning that particular issue. We made a laugh of ourselves internationally on that incident.

I was very pleased to hear Ms Harkin's favourable remarks on the House of Lords because they sit down in a non-partisan way to examine the legislation. They are way ahead of us on separating the utility banks from the merchant banks, even though with London being thought of as a great centre of banking, one would have thought they would seek to defend it.

In an earlier time, when we were arguing for much lower air fares in Europe, Lord Bethell, a member of the House of Lords and the European Parliament, was able to produce useful documents on policy, exactly as Ms Harkin described. She also stated we need a hands-on approach to statutory instruments. I fully agree with her as they have just become a discretionary item that senior civil servants write and which amend legislation already passed by the Houses. One often finds the legislation is later repealed but the statutory instrument stands.

There is an immense amount of work for this House. The House had an interesting debate on water fluoridation on which there are two scientific arguments. The one I get from Trinity College Dublin’s dental school is that it is a largely beneficial measure. However, there are those on the other side of the argument who argue that fluoride is naturally present already in Irish water supplies and is, therefore, not necessary. Rather than debate this issue on a political party basis, the Seanad can debate what both sets of scientists say.

During the week, Mr. Seán Kelly, MEP, spoke about the faults in the design of the euro. It should have been subject to far more scrutiny here. In the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden, it was subject to a lot more scrutiny and they decided not to adopt it. It has already cost Ireland €64 billion and will probably head to €90 billion by the end. It should have been assessed stage by stage. What is superior to fixed exchange rates compared to flexible exchanges? Is there any future for Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy being locked into a fixed exchange rate with Germany? These are issues which we should have debated in this House. There is no substitute for a parliament. A parliament is way better than a committee. It is absolutely vital that this House is retained. It is not adequate to send legislative matters to committees.

The decision on women’s driving insurance was utterly bizarre in that the safer drivers now have to pay more because someone in Europe decided it was equality. Another bizarre issue Senator Crown raised concerned an Irish prohibition on the sale of below-cost cigarettes because it infringed competition rules. It is fair to say he was somewhat apoplectic about this decision on a commodity about which it is universally agreed damages people’s health. We could not bring in a ban on below-cost selling of tobacco products because Europe had decided against it. There are so many issues in which the Parliament should participate and not leave it to the civil servants to make these arrangements and understandings on our behalf.

The health insurance market is a complete shambles as a result of ignoring European decisions. More and more people are giving up health insurance while we stay in breach of the decisions. Meanwhile, the Department of Health which operates the market in a totally biased way seems not to be incurring any penalties.

I commend the wonderful contributions by Senators Keane, MacSharry and Kelly. Ms Harkin is most welcome to the Seanad and these series of addresses have been highly successful. We do want to exercise our role in legislation and participate with MEPs in a non-partisan way. Ms Harkin has definitely led by example and her vision for the Seanad is one which I warmly share.