Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I am sure he recalls the previous occasion he was here before the summer where we were debating the issue of organ donation and the requirement for a new pancreatic and kidney transplant surgeon on the retirement of Dr. David Hickey. Senator Crown's Bill highlights this as much as anything. That is another instance in which there was no succession planning, to use the legal term, for the transfer of knowledge - or, in this case, a wealth of knowledge - held by an individual to his successor. That is what this Bill does: it allows for the reality that people can now work longer, and those who have attained the knowledge need to have the time, space and planning put in place for them to pass that on.

As the Minister knows, the replacement for Dr. Hickey is coming over from Scotland. That is the information we have. We will be having a debate on the whole organ donation issue again, but there is a worry for those who are on the organ donor list regarding what happens when the person they have been dealing with throughout their illness is gone and they have not been introduced to the person who will replace him or her.

I am delighted to see that the Senators opposite are looking forward to Committee Stage of this Bill. Now that they are in a minority, we might just see Committee Stage, and we look forward to their amendments and their support on that Stage. This is a serious piece of legislation. Senators Crown and van Turnhout and I were dealing with another piece of legislation in the area of health. It is fortunate that what could be done within the Department by the Minister, as Senator Crown has outlined, is now being debated, to highlight the issue and to see whether the Minister will act to ensure that the corporate knowledge that is in our health service is retained and that the inter-generational transfer of knowledge will also be put on a structured footing. David Hickey is a great example of how that does not happen in the way it should. This is the proposal put before the House and the Department: that we have a structured approach to new areas of medicine that Irish doctors have specialised in, as Senator Crown has outlined, and which were not even imagined 30 years ago. It is for the people who pioneered that research and the development of that knowledge and are willing to transfer it to a successor over time that we should put in that structure now. There is no doubt that should have been done years ago, but we will now put it in place. If it requires legislation, so be it. I am delighted to see that the Government is not opposing the Bill and I hope that, rather than not opposing the Bill, it will support it and see it passed before the end of this Dáil term.