Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support the request for a debate on data protection and retention by the Department of Social Protection. These are issues that I highlighted throughout the previous Oireachtas. In addition to the concerns on travel, there are also the concerns on many of the actions and findings of the Data Protection Commissioner, which are no longer contested by the Department but which have still not been carried out, on the improper retention of information and documents. I would also like those to be part of the debate.

I also second the calls for a debate on higher education. It is important that we look to the detail here, including, for example, the issue of public-public research as distinct from public-private research as well as the important core issues of access for students and fair play and decent conditions for those who work in our higher education institutions.

I also ask that we might have a debate on Lyme disease, or that it might be incorporated into another debate. This is an issue that has been highlighted to me and I know so many wonderful people whose lives have been unnecessarily and unavoidably curtailed by the fact that the State still fails to have proper preventative recognition or diagnostic actions in respect of Lyme disease. It is very regrettable that so much has been lost to so many people and to us collectively by the State’s failure in that regard.

Finally, and this is a fundamental point, I welcome the right decision of the Government to delay its decision on the national maternity hospital for two weeks. I look forward to the opportunity for this House and the other House to scrutinise this issue in some detail. This is something that we cannot afford to get wrong and that we will pass on for the next 100 years. There is sometimes the idea that with some costs, we must move on and get it over with. My core concern is that, for no real reason and avoidably, we may decide that instead of having a public national maternity hospital, we will have a national maternity hospital run by a private entity, be that a voluntary trust of whatever kind, in which the State has to negotiate on an ongoing basis for decades ahead on crucial matters, even though the State pays for the hospital, both its building and its running.That is not acceptable and does not make sense. We are not in the Ireland of 1922, a new State which relied on partners. We are not even in the Ireland of 2016 and the Mulvey report. The delays to the project have been from those the State is negotiating with, who waited many years for permission from the Vatican on leasing. If the State cannot get clear language on clinical procedures, why should we make ourselves vulnerable to future negotiations on an ongoing basis, especially looking at Roe v. Wade and at the context wherein we need to move forward and not create hostages to fortune? The State needs to evolve and a new proposal must be part of that.