Kevin Humphreys (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, I spoke about the baby friendly health initiative being paused and its funding being discontinued, and the importance of increasing breastfeeding rates in this country. I asked the Leader to organise bringing the Minister to the House for a debate. It will take far too long for the Minister to come to the House so I ask the Leader to use his good offices to ask the Minister to meet, as quickly as possible, the independent voluntary group that has run the initiative so well for the past 20 years to allow it to put its case directly to the Minister. It would be much more helpful to the baby friendly health initiative and much better for the women and babies of this country to get it back up and running as quickly as possible.

We have all seen the rail and transport crisis throughout the country. All of the signals over that past six months are that we will see major industrial problems in public transport. I am very disappointed with regard to the appointment of chairpersons for various Government transport bodies. The term of Ultan Courtney, the chairman of Dublin Bus, expired on 22 September 2017. The term of Philip Gaffney, chairman of Iarnród Éireann, expired on 8 July 2017. The term of Aidan Murphy, chairman of Bus Éireann, expired on 9 July 2017. The term of John Fitzgerald, a member of the National Transportation Authority, expired on 31 May 2017. The term of Vivienne Jupp as chairman of CIE expired on 9 July 2014, which is a bit worrying. The term of John Power, chairman of the Railway Safety Advisory Council, expired on 30 September 2017. These are very concerning. It has been flagged since we had strikes in the Luas that there is huge dissatisfaction in transport, on the very basis that we have a Minister who is quite happy to spout on about public appointments rather than make them. Three of those posts were dealt with at the most recent Cabinet meeting, but the appointees have yet to go before the committees.

We have ended up with a Minister who has no interest whatsoever in being the Minister with responsibility for transport. He is either inept or incompetent or he just does not care. We need action because people depend on public transport to get to work every day. We need a good public transport service if we are to deal with the climate crisis facing Ireland. The transport sector has been increasing its carbon footprint over the past two years but we have seen little or no action. If we were to mark the Minister's scorecard we would probably have to give him two out of ten so far.