Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I extend good wishes to the new Ministers appointed to the Northern Ireland Executive yesterday. One of them, Mr. Jim Wells, is well known here because he is a member of the North-South Inter-Parliamentary Association and has spoken in this Chamber at meetings of that body. He states in a newspaper that he was once listed as the Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children because someone had mixed up the captions at a North-South meeting. I am glad that being chairman of a health committee is not seen as a deterrent to holding ministerial office, at least in Belfast. Mr. Mervyn Storey is the other new Minister.

The Joint Committee on Transport and Communications yesterday interviewed the chairman-designate of Dublin Bus, Mr. Ultan Courtney. Mr. Courtney has had a distinguished career. Having started his working life as a bus conductor, he subsequently worked as a driver. It was wonderful and most impressive to see someone becoming chairman-designate of a public company having worked in the day-to-day business of the company in question.