Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The marine services serving Ireland are a vitally important part of our import and export trade.Our major harbours are served by pilots. Our pilots have no set of qualifications that they must adhere to. They have been looking for qualifications and training commensurate with what is available at other European ports but there is nobody interested in driving forward the professionalism of the service. The pilots are bringing in ships that are hundreds of thousands of tonnes in weight. They are bringing massive container ships into Dublin Port and ships into Waterford Harbour but there is no qualification. There is nowhere I could go to become qualified. It seems as if the idea behind not requiring a qualification or set of qualifications is to ensure we have a stream of pilots available. If you do not look for a qualification, anybody can be a pilot and the service will not be professionalised. We should have a debate with the Minister for Transport in this House on the future policy on harbours. I ask the Leader to facilitate this.

Yesterday morning on my way to Leinster House, I came to the crossroads at Donnybrook and saw a male nurse wearing blue scrubs on a bicycle waiting to cross the road. If we learned nothing else during the Covid pandemic, we learned how quickly infection can be transmitted throughout society. Surely to God nurses should wear their uniforms in the hospital and not on bicycles out on the main street, in the local deli or in Tesco.