Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leader for outlining the business. The latest report from Dr. Gabriel Scally was published yesterday. It highlights that Irish women's smear tests have regularly been tested in unapproved laboratories overseas. Originally, we were told there were six laboratories, then 11 and now 16. The HSE was not aware of and had not approved some of these sites. One of the laboratories, which was one too many, did not have appropriate accreditation. Clearly there was a breakdown in communications between the HSE and those doing the tests. The Leader will agree that the fact the HSE did not even know there were 16 laboratories involved is very disconcerting. Dr. Scally is certainly not happy with the legal processes which, he said, convert error into injustice and then convert that into financial remedies. We need the Minister for Health to come to the House to give us an update on the Scally report and what measures he is putting in place to give certainty to people using the service. We know that no testing system is 100% perfect and things can go wrong but the scale of what went wrong is frightening and shocking to most of us. We need to know that in future it will be a lot tighter and more rigorous than it has been.

I also want to raise the issue of knife crime. In the early hours of yesterday morning, a very tragic event occurred when a homeless man was fatally stabbed on O'Connell Street. This was only four weeks after a very tragic stabbing of a teenage boy in Dundrum, close to where I live in south Dublin. He was also fatally injured. Other Senators have spoken about crime generally and gangland crime. In the past two years, there has been an increase of 66% in seizures of knives by gardaí. We certainly need to know what they Garda will do in terms of prevention.There is no real scrutiny of the level of criminal activity that involves knives. It is imperative the Department acts before these figures rise further. We need far stricter sanctions for people carrying knives than we have had in the past and measures in place to detect people carrying knives because clearly it is a big problem.

Dublin City Council commissioned a survey by the Royal Holloway University of London. The survey found the impact of living in hotels, particularly on younger children, is very destructive. They struggle to learn how to crawl and to walk due to a lack of space, they struggle with their speech and some have sleepless nights and go to school exhausted as a result of anti-social behaviour in these settings. It is important when we consider the issue of homelessness particularly for people growing up, who are developing as human beings and developing their skills, that they have the space to do so safely. I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government to come to the House to discuss the effect of homelessness on families with young children.