Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Bart, Alison and Caoimhe Donegan to the Seanad and to Leinster House, a building that their family has served in with distinction and honour for many years.

The issue of disturbances in Derry and attempts by Catholic and Protestant church leaders to ensure the marching season and 12 July pass by peacefully have again come to the fore. Youths have been arrested, shots fired at security forces and there has been a return to inter-communal strife between residents of the Bogside and Fountain areas of Derry. Those issues must be addressed, although there will not be time to so do in this session. The ongoing drift in Northern Ireland caused by the absence of a functioning Assembly in Stormont has led to a lack of decisions and inadequate progress in the peace process. It is of concern to all Senators. I ask the Leader to allocate time for us to comprehensively address that matter in the next session.

All Senators are concerned by the health service. The HSE has money lying idle for home helps but a staffing crisis is preventing it being used. This issue does not affect only my county. In Galway, Mayo and Roscommon there were 45,000 unused home care hours in the first three months of this year. One in every four people in the country waiting for home help is in that area but no HSE staff are available to carry out the work. There is a systems failure of monumental proportions not just in terms of the startling home help crisis but across the health service and that must be addressed. A trolley crisis, equivalent to that in the annual January peak period, occurs daily. That is another systems failure. People arriving by ambulance at Cork University Hospital may wait for three hours before the ambulance can release them to the care of the accident and emergency department to receive treatment. Step-down beds are available in hospitals such as those in Kenmare, Dingle and Tralee but there are insufficient staffing levels to be able to allow patients use them. Meanwhile, the HSE is spending hundreds of millions of euro on agency staff. All of those issues point to a systems failure in our health service.

The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, is responsible for much legislation of huge importance which has come before the Seanad, whether from his Department or through the Department of Justice and Equality by proxy. However, Ryanair has cancelled 30 flights and a proposed strike tomorrow will affect businesses and the economy.Despite this, while the Minister is willing to intervene in just about every other system and every other Department, he will not intervene in his own to ensure that flights continue between Ireland and the rest of the world. I will refer to Fine Gael rather than the Government because we know the tail is wagging the dog at the moment, but maybe the dog will take control of its own tail.