Gerard Craughwell (Independent)

I will follow on from my colleague who spoke about social media. It has become an extremely toxic environment. We are all now used to the whipping-up of mass emails to us to support this, that or the other. The senders do not even do us the courtesy of referring to us by our names. They address us as "Dear Deputy" or "Dear Oireachtas Member". I am not a Deputy; I am a Senator and I am Gerard or you can call me Craughwell if you want. I throw the gauntlet down to the Cathaoirleach because he has done some pretty good work on public consultation. Our colleagues have said that perhaps we should get in the social media companies, because God knows it is impossible to contact them. Perhaps we should get them in here for a face-to-face meeting in the full glare of the public view. I think the Cathaoirleach is the one who can actually lead that. I ask him to consider it over the coming days. He would have 100% of any support that I or any other Member of the House could give.

Yesterday, my colleague Senator Ruane spoke about the absence of Ministers for Commencement matters. Yesterday, I raised a Commencement matter on the extremely important issue of the RSV vaccine for people over the age of 65. I am aware that the Minister has laid on the RSV vaccine for babies. Thousands of people die every year through RSV. The Department provided an answer for the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne. In fairness to him, all he could do was read out the answer he was given because he is not in that Department, as far as I am aware. I was talking about over-65s and the answer I got was about babies. The last paragraph dealt with the fact that there is a technical group looking into the benefits of this vaccine. Why is it looking into it? Scotland, England and Wales have got it. If you are over 70, you get the vaccine. It is once every three years and you can get it up to the age of 80. It reduces the level of morbidity and the number of hospital beds used. The international evidence is clear. Why can we not just adopt the evidence from abroad and bring this in? I ask the Leader to raise this matter again through his party. It may be unfair to do that to him but I ask him to raise it in party rooms and ask whether we could just look at the international evidence and make the RSV vaccine available to those over 65. I do not want to get hit with RSV. It might not seem like it, but I am over 65. I do not want it. I have to pay €235 to get that vaccine. I am in a fortunate position in that, at the age I am, I have fewer responsibilities to my family and can afford €235 but people living on the old age pension cannot.