A number of colleagues have raised the very important matter of the financial condition in this country. I was very happy to follow the invigorating speech by Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell and her suggestion that we should follow the money trail. We can follow it even further than she suggested. We can follow it to where it ended up, in the French and German banks. I say this because this is the first meeting of this House since the visit of Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble, the German Finance Minister. I was astonished to hear him say that he wished to compliment Ireland on how well we had done and how useful we were in order that we could be pointed at internationally as an example of the success of the plan. This is reminiscent of the Famine which was a direct result of the ruthless application of a rigid financial system and theory from the centre and which led to disaster. It had no concern for the welfare of the people. I think one would need to be Jonathan Swift to do justice to the ironies implicit in the fact that we are being complimented on how well we are doing, in a week which saw evictions in Ireland and the establishment of the second soup kitchen in Ireland, in Athlone, the first being in Galway.

I call on Dr. Wolfgang Schäuble to wake up and smell the soup. The odour should be in his nostrils from Greece to the Atlantic coast of Ireland. If he thinks that it is a success then I do not know what language he was speaking because it might have been German but it certainly was not sense.

I support Senator Comiskey's comments on the danger to ash trees in Ireland. Last September I attended an event in Ballinasloe when a local councillor presented a hurley to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government. I believe that it led to Kilkenny winning the All-Ireland but that is a story for another day. The threat to the ash tree is serious.

In 1998 the old sanatorium in Waterford was demolished and a new hospital was built in its place which is now known as the Waterford Regional Hospital. It took almost ten years to complete the project at a cost of several hundred million euro. In the past two weeks a leaked document has come to prominence which suggests that Waterford Regional Hospital should be downgraded from level 4 to level 3. All political parties and politicians in the south east are concerned about the matter. The hospital serves 500,000 people, provides a broad range of services and is one of the eight centres of excellence for cancer here. As it works extremely well and is not broken, I do not see a reason to fix it. I thank the Leader for his assistance on the matter in the past week. I appreciate his help and the advice that he gave. I also appreciate the negotiations and lobbying that he has engaged in which are quite obvious to anybody following the matter.

I ask the Leader to ask the Minister to make a statement on the matter and to provide clarification for the people of the south east. The hospital serves Wexford, Kilkenny, Tipperary and Waterford. Why has the downgrade been proposed? We need an answer. A downgrade would not benefit the welfare of patients or their care. Is it proposed for the betterment of vested interests? I want the Leader to ask the Minister that question. I support the comments made by the previous speaker on the matter. I hope that it can be dealt with in a speedy fashion in order that we can kill, at an early stage, the idiotic suggestion to downgrade a hospital which provides a perfect and brilliant service in the south east.