I congratulate Senator Hayden on her election as the new Whip of the Labour Party Seanad group. I wish her well in her endeavours.

I share Senator Darragh O’Brien’s concern about pre-budget speculation and consternation.

I thought we had ceased the leaking of pre-budget proposals so as not to upset unnecessarily families already put to the pin of their collar. I agree with Fr. Seán Healy of Social Justice Ireland who said it would be unacceptable and unjust to cut child benefit for needy families. Can anyone honestly say everyone who receives child benefit requires it? It is time we came to terms with the reality - that we need to help those who most need our help. Since I was a boy, we have been told that one cannot means-test children’s allowance because the computers in the two Departments do not talk to each other. Someone will have to start talking to someone because we need to make the best use of resources in order that those most in need benefit. We should await the decision before rushing to make rash judgments on what the outcome will be. I know families that require child benefit to pay for groceries and dress their children, but we all know families also that draw it down and give it to a boy or girl at 18 years of age to go on an around the world tour. That is not the purpose for which it was intended.

It sticks in my craw as much as anyone else’s that yesterday the State, on behalf of the taxpayer, parted with another €1 billion to AIB in an unsecured bond. Will the Leader ask the Minister for Finance to come to the House to tell us how we are holding the banks to account for the support we have given to them? There has been no quid pro quo in terms of support for mortgage holders, home loans and businesses. In three weeks time AIB will close 54 branches across the country, despite the supports it has received from the State. One branch is located in Portarlington which has a population of 8,000. It is not a village; rather, it is the sixth fastest growing town in the country according to the previous census. I ask the Minister for Finance to intervene, not to overturn the decision - he cannot micromanage AIB - but to ask it to defer the closures at least until January and in the interim to carry out a socio-economic analysis of the impact of the decision.

I commend the wholehearted support in a statement of Dr. Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, for the children’s rights referendum. He has always been a courageous and fair-minded man. I refer also to the efforts he is making to curb the excesses at First Holy Communion time, the €45 million industry that has sprung up around it and the pressures, because of the burden put on families. I welcome this because there is nothing as unseemly and unsightly as young boys and girls in their outfits running around pubs at all hours of the night on their First Holy Communion day.

I agree with what Senator Darragh O’Brien said on child benefit. We need to hear from the Government what its precise intentions are. I, for one, am worried. Universality has always been an important principle. There must be another way by which more privileged members of society can be taxed. Given the importance of the principle involved, I would be sorry to see universality go.

I, too, welcome what Archbishop Martin had to say. He is right about the balanced proposal to be put in the children’s rights referendum. As Members will be aware, I have tabled amendments which I wish to explore with the Minister to see whether they could offer an improvement; nonetheless, I restate what I said previously, that, overall, I am happy with the balance struck. The children’s rights referendum cannot be separated from the debate that needs to happen on the issue of child benefit. Many are going to see the proposal on children’s rights to be put in the referendum as a cynical PR exercise if, at the same time, they see no progress being made in dealing with the failures relating to children, whether it be the HSE’s ongoing performance, the resources available to children in situations where there is danger or deprivation, the actions and failures of social workers and the resource issues surrounding all of these areas.

If there is a fear that the budget will impinge on families we can expect a degree of scepticism, if not cynicism, from families about what is behind the children's rights referendum. I make that as a political point and am not happy about it but I believe it is something the Government will have to take very seriously.

I also note - I am sad to do so - it is being proposed, rightly but sadly, that teachers should receive specialist training in how to manage disruptive behaviour in schools. The National Council for Special Education has made recommendations in this area, as people know, recommending that a teacher in every school would attend a three-day seminar. Already €200 million of additional teaching resources was allocated last year to deal with behaviour issues. That is a real tragedy. We should be asking what is going on in our society. However, I wonder why it is always about trying to address the problems and why there never seems to be an enthusiasm to ask why they are happening. When are we going to have a debate about issues such as family breakdown, the negative effects of family instability on children and behavioural issues? We have to be courageous about encouraging stable family life and having a debate that would lead to that if we are ever going to solve some of these problems, the symptoms of which we are seeing now.

I note that the Labour Party members of the Government are not going to ask for clarification about the criteria used by the Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, in regard to the primary care centres. I do not understand that. If one thing is clear it is that what we saw in this entire issue was old politics, not the new politics that were performed at the election. I wish our former colleague in the Seanad, Deputy Alex White, well in his new role as Minister of State with responsibility for primary care. I would like to know whether he will be in charge or be subject to the whims of his senior Minister. It is a bad day for transparency and accountability and new politics when the Labour Party Ministers of Government are not willing to ask the questions they obviously should be asking about the criteria employed in the decision around the choice of Swords and Balbriggan.