Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government has announced the level of bids for Bord Gáis is unacceptable. It is fantastic that we will not have a fire sale but will get the best value for these companies and that brave decision must be welcomed.

I am concerned about speculation in the media about the depletion of our fish quotas. I understand that if what is being proposed in terms of a cut to our quota in fishing off our coastline materialises, we will see a loss of €70 million to the Irish fishing industry. Why is this happening? We should be fighting to increase rather than decrease our quotas. We must fight because fishing is a growth industry.

In regard to medical cards, I suggest to the primary care reimbursement service, PCRS, that it is long past time for it to set up some sort of customer feedback panel to find out how customers are being treated. A lady on my local radio station this morning, Clare FM, was in a very distressed state because of how she was treated by the PCRS. If the service set up some sort of structure for it to get feedback, it would learn from the experiences it is putting people through. This issue is becoming a crisis and needs to be grasped. The Minister would be better off staying in his Department to sort that out than coming in here to listen to the ranting and raving we heard this morning.