Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If that has not come up yet, I would suggest that she puts it down again. It is clear that engagement with the stakeholders is needed. We will write to the Minister for Education to say that.

Senator Gallagher raised his grave concern about the ambulance service in Monaghan. He explained how, this week, 16 12-hour shifts were not covered and it will possibly be 19 next week. There is concern about the four vacancies given these have been found to be difficult to fill. As the Senator said, the solution is certainly not to take away overtime from those who are currently working and to look for shifts to be covered by personnel from Dublin and Louth. As the Senator rightly said, such personnel may be called out to different things that are happening and priority will be given to their own counties. There needs to be agreement at management level in relation to the long-term future. In the interim, we should look for overtime. We will ask the Minister for Health to come to the House to discuss the ambulance service in general, along with the accident and emergency situation, to which Senator Craughwell referred.

Senator Duffy spoke about the regeneration of our towns. He noted the excitement regarding the community futures scheme for Killasser and Callow, and how the grassroots of the community had come together to ensure they could do that with their town, which is great. He also mentioned the Swinford swimming pool at Áras Attracta. I am familiar with a similar model at Moore Abbey in Monasterevin, where there was a swimming pool for those with intellectual disabilities who used the services, but it was also open to the community. It is always a huge loss when that happens. The fact there is a swimming pool that is not being used is a crying shame. Last August, the then Minister of State with responsibility for sport, Deputy Thomas Byrne, launched a national swimming strategy to make sure that access would be given to every individual in the country so people would have the opportunity to swim. At the moment, only 28% of primary school children have opportunities to swim and we want to get that to at least 40%. Ireland does very well in swimming at the Olympics, the Paralympics and the Special Olympics and, as a nation, we really value swimming. I totally agree. I support the call for the Department of sport to work with Mayo County Council and the community that owns Áras Attracta to try to have that. It could possibly go in as a Commencement matter and we will certainly support that.

Senator Craughwell spoke very movingly about his daughter, who had cancer at the age of 19. It is wonderful that she has survived. He makes a very valid point about her chronic health situation and the fact she has to go to accident and emergency all of the time and wait there. Certainly, anybody who has had cancer and has ongoing problems should have a medical card. We will look for a debate with the Minister for Health.

Senator Brady spoke about the horse racing industry, with which I am quite familiar, being from Kildare. He referred to the issue of chip passports and identification. He noted that there was now a long delay with passports being issued for the Irish draught horse industry and that horses were being sold without passports. That is a problem. We will look for a debate with the Minister for agriculture. There was a debate with the Minister on CAP last week but I do not know whether the Senator had the opportunity to raise this with him. I accept it is an important issue. That needs to happen.

Senator Ní Chuilinn raised the issue of dual diagnosis and the concern about funding for health workers being pulled. We will certainly look for a debate with the Minister in that regard. The Senator made the valid point that we were coming up to Mother’s Day and it was a very difficult time for mothers who had lost children, especially to suicide. We are thinking of them.

Senator Byrne spoke about roads funding in Wexford, a county I am very familiar with. He said that, while the county received €23 million, which would seem like a lot of money, it is not receiving pro rata funding in comparison to other counties that have a similar population. The programme for Government allows for catch-up funds for roads in poor repair and the Senator noted that Wexford had the third-worst roads in Ireland, although I think Kildare is fairly close to it. We will look for a debate. The last time I gave a response on this issue, I made the point that we should have specific funding for footpaths and bridges. We will look for a debate with the Minister on those issues and we can talk about the funding element as well.