John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Will the Leader ask the Minister for Justice and Equality to make representations to the Pakistani Government on behalf of Asia Bibi who has been in prison for the past four years for the crime of blasphemy. I find it very offensive that in any country anywhere in the world somebody is serving a custodial sentence, not to mention, as this lady is, under a death sentence which, thankfully has not yet been carried out, for the punitive crime of blasphemy. In her case there were very serious grounds for believing, even if one believed erroneously that blasphemy was sufficient grounds for a civil prosecution, that she did not commit it. This House has been keen to make representations to foreign diplomats about injustices for which it believes their governments are responsible. We need to bring this one to the attention of the Pakistani authorities.

As I desperately need the Minister for Health to come to the House today, I am proposing an amendment to the Order of Business. I want him to explain how it is that two days ago we saw statistics indicating that 50,000 people, approximately 1.25% of the entire population, were on waiting lists in the health service for more than one year. I have been back in Ireland for 21 very odd years. The reality is that this would not be considered even remotely acceptable anywhere else in the world, that people are on a waiting list for more than one year, yet we have people on waiting lists for two, three and four years for some services. In the past we highlighted problems with waiting lists to gain access to life-saving obesity services and surgery. There has been an increase of approximately one eighth in the number of grade A officials in the HSE in the past 12 months. While we are beginning to see some easing of the moratorium on hiring as nursing and physiotherapist numbers are down, we are still hiring more bureaucrats. That is the reason I ask the Minister to come to the House to deal with these issues this week.