Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I support my colleague, Senator Mooney, on the important issue he raised. I was in the Chamber for the Commencement debate yesterday and heard the Minister, Deputy Leo Varadkar, responding to the matter raised by the Senator. To put it mildly, the Minister was very flippant in his response to the Senator and to an adjoining matter I raised concerning the health sector. That arrogance and flippancy are not going unnoticed. The Minister has an obligation to challenge the situation in the HSE rather than blaming that body. After all, he is ultimately responsible, as Minister for Health, for deciding the executive's budget. The escalation of waiting lists is another issue about which there is great concern. In addition, as referred to by the leader of the Fianna Fáil group, we have a crisis in hospital emergency departments. A constituent of mine had to wait 36 hours in the emergency department of a Dublin hospital after getting ill at the weekend. The Minister says there is no issue within the Department of Health but there clearly is. He must come to the House to respond to our concerns and I hope the Leader will agree to issue that invitation.

My colleague, Senator MacSharry, referred to an issue regarding Bank of Ireland. The problem is that regulation of the banks is not really happening at the moment. We have retail banks effectively going into corporate banking and being interested only in services on which there are high margins, like the mortgages for which they are charging over the odds. The regulator must challenge the banks on their actions. If Bank of Ireland gets away with this, all the other banks will follow if there is profit in it for them.