Victor Boyhan (Independent)

I want to raise two issues. The IFA and the Irish Farmers' Journal have to be commended on a very extensive report the Leader may have heard and read about in the media in the past few days. The report is about the investigation into Brazil and its beef. I will not quote extensively from it. There are very serious concerns about meat, the Mercosur deal and access to the market, but I can say it was a very extensive fact-finding mission. It raises very serious concerns about a level playing pitch and about what the Irish meat producers and the European meat producers have to deal with versus what is happening in Brazil. There is light touch regulation and the report details the experience of this group that went out from the IFA, the Irish Farmers' Journal and other people with authority in this area. They are also detailed in this report. I commend this report into the Brazilian meat industry, commissioned by the Irish Farmers' Journal and the IFA. It is very clear in setting out its concerns. It has to be alarming. I know that we have just come from a private meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food. I know Sinn Féin Deputy Martin Kenny indicated and spoke about how we will discuss it. As a sectoral committee, it is important it is discussed there. For rural Senators and TDs, it is important they are fully aware of it. If they do not have the report, I recommend finding it.

The next issue I raise is the more than 7,500 people who need cataract surgery in Ireland. This is quite a simple procedure. I am a former director of the National Treatment Purchase Fund. I know how it handled it in the past. A lot of these treatments can be done quickly and timely, but there is a problem as those who need it form a very extensive group. It was brought to my attention by a colleague of the Leader, Councillor Clodagh Higgins, on Galway Bay FM in the past week. A breakdown of the figure stated that more than 3,600 people in Galway alone are waiting for eyecare treatment. That makes it very focused, brings it home and makes it relevant to the Leader. It is something that really is appalling, considering elderly people physically cannot see the ground in front of them, and thereby are disadvantaged. We are trying to support elderly people. I ask that we have a debate on eyecare because it is a specific niche we need to look at. I will send the Leader on the stuff I have today and ask him to raise it with his own contacts within his own parliamentary party and with the Minister for Health.