I join Senators in wishing our colleague, Senator David Norris, a very speedy recovery. We look forward to having him back among us very soon.

The events of the past 24 hours show how difficult political life is and how quickly the story moves on with the announcement of the new appointments this morning. It is appropriate that we pay tribute to the work of Deputy Alan Shatter as Minister for Justice and Equality during the past three years. While much of the political commentary has been predictable, both from his colleagues in government and from the Opposition parties, it is worth quoting the director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Mr. Mark Kelly, who said yesterday:

However critical and controversial the findings of the Guerin review may be, the ICCL very much regrets that it has become necessary for a Minister as distinguished as Alan Shatter to resign in these circumstances. The Council shares the Taoiseach's view that Alan Shatter was an exceptionally hard working, radical and reforming minister. In particular, he brought to his position a genuine and deeply-knowledgeable understanding of the legal reforms needed to render Ireland a more equal society and was wholeheartedly committed to seeing the necessary legislation adopted. In this, and in many other areas where vital law reform projects remain incomplete, his talents and his undoubted mettle will be sorely missed.

We all know that Deputy Alan Shatter, in a short three-year period, addressed and resolved many difficult issues that previous holders of the office failed to tackle. He has done the State and its citizens some considerable service. It is really regrettable that significant management problems within An Garda Síochána that occurred prior to him becoming Minister should end the ministerial career of such a talented and dedicated Minister. I join colleagues in wishing him, Carol and his family well into the future. I also wish those who were appointed to ministerial office this morning well.

It is very welcome that tomorrow afternoon, at 2.30 p.m., the Taoiseach will turn the sod for the Gort to Tuam N 17-N 18 motorway - the biggest and most significant infrastructural project that will happen in the country this year. It will bring significant employment into an area that has been ravaged by unemployment in recent years. I hope the project will be the start of some very significant employment opportunities that it will bring into the region in the coming years.

I acknowledge Deputy Alan Shatter's true reforming zeal, the technical expertise and the enthusiasm he brought to the reform process in the Department of Justice and Equality. He showed skills in that area that could be learned by many others throughout government. I think he saw current problems as problems to be fixed and not as something to wring one's hands and say "We cannot do anything about it". It is a shame that things have worked out as they have. I will not say anything further on this issue until we see the results of the full report that comes out about the handling of the entire issue of the reports of malpractices within An Garda Síochána. If it does emerge that there was a systematic manhandling of legitimate whistleblowers, who put their necks on the line in the service of this republic, then the entire culture of government that allowed that to go on for so long must be addressed. It may well be that questions will be asked higher up the political food chain as to what exactly was going on for several months when everybody in the country was aware that serious allegations had been made and that rather than dealing with the allegations, every appearance is given that instead an attempt was made to undermine those who tried to blow the whistle - not only at one level but by civil servants, politicians, Ministers and at the higher echelons of An Garda Síochána. This is simply inexcusable. It is not acceptable in a democracy. It is not specific to the Government because I think those of us who are a certain age will remember the 1980s. We will remember that this is something that appears to be endemic in the process of government - this lack of accountability, which in its other manifestations has led to many of the financial disasters which we have had.

I request the Deputy Leader to get a commitment from the Department of Health that a report card will be submitted to us on the results of this very expensive - I believe utterly wasteful - management consultancy exercise that Professor Robert S. Kaplan conducted on behalf of the HSE at huge cost and at a time that we have such a shortage of nurses, physiotherapists, doctors, speech therapists and where children are waiting so long for services. Will a report be given to the Members of this Chamber of the specific recommendations - in other words a value for money report - on the value for money consultancy? I think we need it.

I am glad that we have a lawyer of great repute acting as Leader this morning. I am still so incensed over this issue that the HSE was able to go to the Press Ombudsman in an attempt to silence wholly legitimate political criticism of the current policy with respect to medical cards. It is my intention in my next Private Members' Bill to attempt to introduce legislation which would limit the rights of publicly-funded bodies to resort to legal or other threats when they perceive that they have been "defamed". Criticising a public body is not defamation, it is democracy.

Let me add my voice to Members wishing Senator David Norris well and hoping he will be back among us again.

I pay tribute to the work of the former Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Alan Shatter. A number of political commentators have jokingly said that he was the next best thing to a Labour Party Minister. I would regard that as a serious compliment. I welcome the appointment of Deputy Frances Fitzgerald as Minister for Justice and Equality, whom I may also say is similarly acceptable to the Labour Party ranks and has done a wonderful job in her role as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. I welcome the appointment of Deputy Charles Flanagan to the Cabinet and hope he will do as good a job in the Department of Children and Youth Affairs as the previous Minister has done.

I welcome the joint launch by the Rape Crisis Centre and Women's Aid of an awareness campaign around violence against women. Some 91,000 Irish women experience sexual violence - more often than not at the hands of either partners or people close to them. The campaign today is entitled "Not happily ever after" and is calling on women not to be afraid to seek help.

It has been my experience unfortunately that some women seek help but do not receive it. I am shocked to say that in my own area of Dún Laoghaire we are only now opening a women's refuge in the near future thanks to the work of some very hard-working Labour Party councillors. We do not have the resources available to assist women experiencing violence in this country. In particular, the newspapers report today about increasing house prices. We know that it is reported in the news every single day how difficult it is to secure accommodation in this country. It is particularly vulnerable people like women seeking to leave unhappy relationships in family homes who are having severe difficulty in accessing housing. I know we previously had a debate on violence against women but the emerging situation requires this issue to be dealt with again. In that context, I ask the Deputy Leader to have another debate on the issue of women experiencing violence in their homes.

I had better correct the record from yesterday morning when I said "it appears that the Minister, Deputy Shatter, has taken on some of the Teflon left behind by Bertie." It is quite clear this morning that Bertie is still ahead in the Teflon stakes.

On a personal level and as my party's justice spokesperson, I thank Deputy Alan Shatter for the work he has done as Minister. We did not agree on everything but we agreed on a fair number of issues and we were always civil. There was never any doubt about his work rate, intellectual ability and knowledge of his brief. I wish him well. I welcome the appointment of Deputy Frances Fitzgerald as Minister for Justice and Equality and hope she will champion the issue of direct provision. I also wish Deputy Charles Flanagan well in his new role as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs.

It is clear that Deputy Alan Shatter presided over a number of debacles as Minister. However, as late as one hour before his resignation was announced yesterday, the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and other Ministers were rallying to his defence. I contend that his resignation is a party political head on a plate in response to the hammering that Fine Gael and the Labour Party are getting at the doors in the run-up to the local elections because they hope this will persuade people to vote for them. I do not think that is going to happen because Fine Gael and the Labour Party were complicit in the controversies over which Deputy Alan Shatter presided. We will study the reports in due course and I will welcome the opportunity to debate them in these Houses. Government Members backed the Deputy in all of these issues every time they were debated in the Houses. He was not alone in the GSOC and other controversies. We need a full explanation on these controversies and a debate on the Government's plans for dealing with them. I do not think this issue will go away with the resignation of Deputy Alan Shatter because we need to examine the reasons the Government stood fully behind the decisions he made in regard to the Garda Commissioner, the whistleblowers and the GSOC controversy. We can have that debate with the new Minister, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, when she is available.

I pay tribute to Deputy Alan Shatter for the work he has done since long before he came into the Oireachtas. He was the first person to publish a comprehensive review of family law, as far back as 1976, and gave leadership in progressing family law since. He went on to prepare the judicial separation legislation and was directly or indirectly involved with a wide variety of reforms. It is not long ago that judges expressed the opinion that all family law matters should be addressed at home. We have come a long way in a short period in terms of reforming family law and Deputy Alan Shatter has contributed immensely to that reform process. He was a very good Minister in the way he brought reforms that were badly needed and his loss will be felt in terms of the reforms that are still needed. I hope he will continue to contribute to the political arena for a long time to come.

I welcome the appointment of Deputy Frances Fitzgerald as Minister for Justice and Equality. She has proved to be an effective Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and I think she will be a good Minister for Justice and Equality. I also welcome the appointment of Deputy Charles Flanagan as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and wish him well in his new role.

I have previously raised the issue of the budget for health, of which 25%, or €3.25 billion, goes to organisations outside the HSE. Some 2,260 organisations benefit from that money. Under committee procedures, the Committee of Public Accounts appears to have a complete hold over every other committee when it comes to dealing with issues arising in these organisations. This means the Joint Committee on Health and Children is restricted in how it deals with a major part of its business. It is wrong that the latter committee has no influence over ensuring value for money for one quarter of the HSE's budget or making sure funded organisations are providing the services required. This situation should not be allowed to continue. The Committee of Public Accounts has only examined three or four of these 2,260 organisations to date. Perhaps we should have a debate on the issue in this House. We have already discussed it in the Joint Committee on Health and Children. We should not be prevented from doing our job in that committee.

I wish Senator David Norris a speedy recovery and hope he will return to the Chamber soon. We miss his wit when he is not here.

On a more sad note, I was previously a constituency colleague of Deputy Alan Shatter in Dublin South prior to my transfer to Dublin South-West. I pay tribute to the Deputy for the work he has done and the way he supported me in the constituency. Every question I submitted to his office was speedily answered. I also pay tribute to the staff of his office who are often forgotten. I wish Deputy Alan Shatter, his wife, Carol, and their two children well. The Deputy was well described by a headline in today's edition of The Irish Times, which stated: "Minister Shatter: a polarising reformer who leaves a long legacy on the statute books". Nobody can argue with that assessment because in his three short years in office he produced a long list of legislation. A number of speakers have referred to the Children Court and the reforms to family law. The reductions he made to judicial salaries did him no favours with the Judiciary. He made courts easier to access and introduced reforms to the citizenship process and the prison system, including ending the practice of slopping out. We were all proud of the solution to the Magdalen laundries issue, which he brought through the Houses. He is a socialising reformer with a liberal agenda. He leaves a significant legacy that will stand the test of time. His other initiatives include the new court of appeal, the personal insolvency system, the Criminal Justice (Forensic Evidence and DNA Database System) Bill 2013, which we were due to debate today, the reform of legal services and the criminalisation of human trafficking. I was speaking on the Assisted Decision Making (Capacity) Bill 2013 in the context of a Labour Party Private Members' motion on disability services when the news came through of his resignation. That Bill was delayed since July 2013 for the simple reason that Deputy Alan Shatter wanted to ensure it was in sync with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This is an important Bill for people with mental and physical disabilities. He wanted to ensure he could get the legislation right.

The new Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, also has developed a strong track record in her previous office as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. She is a woman who is well able to take over her new portfolio and I have full confidence in her. I wish her the best and also wish that strong man behind her, Deputy Charles Flanagan, who has been a popular and courageous chairman of the Fine Gael parliamentary party, well. I am delighted that the acting Garda Commissioner, the Attorney General, the Director for Public Prosecutions and the Minister for Justice and Equality are women. I wish them all well. I also wish the good men behind them well. We cannot have one without the other.

The Senator never mentioned the Deputy Leader.