I sympathise with the 500 people who will lose their jobs following the announcement made by Hewlett Packard this morning. It will affect not only Kildare and Dublin but also counties like my own, as well as Longford, Leitrim, Sligo and others.

Like others, I was horrified watching the "Prime Time Investigates" programme on Monday evening on waiting lists. Unfortunately, the news was not new to some of us as public representatives. We knew that it had been happening for quite some time, but it had been denied on a regular basis by the HSE. Having listened to commentators in the past couple of hours, many international experts suggest the availability of funding is not the difficulty. A total of €15.1 billion is to be invested in the health service this year, yet there is a chronic shortage of health personnel, some of whom we discussed during a debate on legislation yesterday. There are horrendous waiting lists. Somebody somewhere must be responsible for managing this colossal amount of money and it is time that this question was asked. Regarding Senator Rose Conway-Walsh's comments on the new leader of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland and her commitment to tackling waiting lists there, per head of population they are worse than in the Twenty-six Counties-----

That is why we need a united Ireland and a whole island approach, as the Senator knows.

Please allow Senator Diarmuid Wilson to conclude.

Senator Rose Conway-Walsh and her colleagues who have been in government in the Six Counties with the Democratic Unionist Party for the past ten years should be ashamed of themselves. They cannot wash their hands of the responsibility they bear as members of a government for ten years.

The Senator should address the Chair, not invite debate.

Let me address the position in the Twenty-six Counties and Sinn Féin policy.

Yes.

If we had followed its policies and its record in Northern Ireland is anything to go by, we would have had an even worse disaster.