I am offering a solution.

I also suggested an alternative.

No.

No. I opposed the spending of €9 million for it.

Teachers and parents were laughing at the idea.

Sixteen. I am saying the cut-off should be 16 years of age.

Yes. No problem.

Much easier.

As the Minister knows, the vast majority of people in the country want an asylum process that provides help to those who need help and returns home those who do not need help. That should be the basis and logic of any asylum system - one that offers compassion to those who are fleeing war and violence but one where common sense is used in the system for those who are trying to use the asylum process for economic reasons. One of my major problems with this particular Bill is that it only deals with the sideshow in t…

That is worrisome and it needs to be fixed. The other aspect to this is that to deal with this issue and not look at the 85% of people coming through Britain is a problem. We need to go to Britain and to the Government in London to try to work out a process that when a person wants to apply for an application for asylum here in Ireland, they do so when they move to the island and vice versa because there are flows in both directions. It is in London's best interest to be able to know who is coming onto their island…

The Minister mentioned that people voted for European integration and co-operation. That is absolutely true but there has been significant creep in terms of EU control on a range of different issues in recent years. EU integration is not always a good thing. The EU often makes decisions that are not in our interests. The Mercosur agreement is a full example of that. The Minister talks about us making a democratic decision here. The Parliament on College Green made a democratic decision to wind itself up at that par…

I want to talk about CHI and the enormous damage being done to children in this country. I received a reply to a parliamentary question today which states that 525 scoliosis operations were cancelled in the past four years. That figure has doubled within just three years. Half of the reasons were given as clinical but we know that Harvey Morrison Sherratt was taken off the waiting list for clinical reasons. That is a very broad brush. We also know that 20% of the cancellations are unaccounted for at the moment. We …

At least 20%-----

The recommendations-----

I asked a question about the terms of reference.

There has been no meeting with the families on the terms of reference.

Hundreds of thousands of people are living in commuter hell in this country. Hundreds of thousands of people are now spending four hours a day travelling to and from work. They are being charged higher taxes on their fuel and higher tolls for the pleasure of doing this. In Meath, 60,000 people have no option but to use their cars because of the lack of public transport. The Taoiseach's friend Noel Dempsey promised in 1994 that a rail line would be built. There is no construction date and no ring-fenced funding for …

She should be in Fianna Fáil.

I was not derogatory.

I was not derogatory about the poor fella.