Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I support Senator Naughton's call for a debate with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Charles Flanagan, on the Tuam issue. It is important to acknowledge where we have come from and how attitudes have changed in more recent times in terms of what is and is not acceptable. Of course, the practices we are discussing were happening not so long ago. It is less than 30 years, for example, since the status of illegitimacy was abolished in Irish law, a campaign in which I was involved. We expected it to take up to ten years to achieve our objective. In fact, from the date we launched our campaign, it took seven years to achieve the change in law. There was a different type of thinking on the issue at the time.

I well remember the opposition to having the law changed in regard to children who were born outside marriage. They did not have the same rights as children born within marriage. Let us not forget where we have come from and the attitudes that existed at the time. I would welcome a debate in this House on an issue which has now come into the public domain.

I want to raise the important issue - it is not the first time I have raised it - of the lack of progress that has been made on the recruitment of junior doctors in the past three years. We are facing a changeover again within the next month. Many junior doctors will go abroad because we have not put in place a comprehensive structure to retain them in this country. There is the major question of why taxpayers are paying out €90 million per annum for medical education and a huge portion of that is disappearing within 12 months of people graduating from college. We need to have a debate in this House with the Minister for Health and the Minister for Education and Skills on how we deal with this issue. More than 60% of junior doctors are gone within 12 months of that €90 million being spent. It is time we had a serious debate on restructuring how we employ junior doctors, the training that we are offering them and their prospects of remaining in this country. It is sad that, in an area where there are jobs, Irish graduates are not finding them sufficiently attractive to encourage them to stay in this country.