Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I did not interrupt Senator Burke. The good reason I was not there is that we passed an all-party motion in this House that the Order of Business takes precedence over any committee work. That is the rule I followed. I ask the Leader to remind his junior colleague that the Order of Business takes precedence and on that day we were raising very important issues, one of which will be dealt with by a Private Members' motion on maternity services after the Order of Business this morning.

If Senator Burke inquired from any of his defeated colleagues in Sligo, Leitrim, south Donegal or Roscommon, they could tell him that the medical card issue was the single most important issue on the doorsteps in those constituencies. That is why I and some of my colleagues did not engage in a futile back-slapping exercise. The people I listen to in the context of the review of medical cards are the elderly, the sick, the handicapped people and those who are terminally ill, who have informed me, first-hand, of the failure of the system, so I have no interest in wasting resources and taking these people from their work to facilitate a media exercise to try to make a failing Minister and Department of Health look better. I look forward to that debate and I hope it can be held as early as possible. The Minister is coming to the House today but we need a debate on this issue which, along with maternity services in the north west, is probably the reason Fine Gael and the Labour Party collectively lost 160 seats nationally.