We have three petitions for consideration today. Petition No. 20 of 2021 is "Why we need to dispel old illogical lunacy laws in Ireland which have been amended and repealed. This is not enough. They need to be put beyond use by being dispelled. They are the epitome of injustice." from Ms Philomena Geoghegan. This petition relates to a request to dispel old lunacy laws. The secretariat has corresponded with the petitioner and the recommendation is that the petition be considered again upon response from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and forwarded then to the Joint Committee on Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth for its consideration. Do members have any views on that or is it agreed?
Decisions on Public Petitions Received
It is agreed. It will be interesting to see what comes back from the Department.
Petition No. 39 of 2021 is "Issues relating to the Office of the Ombudsman for the Defence Forces and the Ombudsman (Defence Forces) Act 2004" from Mr. Niall Donohoe. This petition relates to issues the petitioner has had with the Ombudsman for the Defence Forces, ODF, in the past and related concerns with the Ombudsman (Defence Forces) Act 2004. The committee recommends that correspondence from Mr. Justice Alan Mahon, ODF, be sent to the petitioner for comment within 14 days, requesting that he engage directly with the Mr. Justice Mahon. Do members have any views on that or is it agreed?
It is agreed.
Petition No. 36 of 2022 is "Re-open Ennis, Nenagh & St. John’s Emergency Departments" from Ms Noleen Moran. This petition relates to a request from the petitioner on behalf of the Mid-West Hospital Campaign group to upgrade the Ennis, Nenagh and St. John’s hospitals to model 3 in order to relieve overcrowding and to reopen the emergency departments at these facilities. There has been much correspondence between the petitioner and the secretariat. There is a mountain of stuff. Some came in recently that has not yet been submitted and that we have not seen because it came too late to be distributed. The committee recommends that correspondence No. JCPP-r-1029a-2022, dated 27 September 2022, from the petitioner in response to correspondence from UL Hospitals Group be forwarded to the HSE, UL Hospitals Group and the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, for reply within 14 days. Do members have any views on that or is it agreed?
It is agreed.
That concludes our consideration of public petitions this afternoon. I invite members of the public to submit petitions via our online portal available at petitions.oireachtas.ie. A petition may be addressed to the Houses of the Oireachtas on a matter of general public concern or interest or an issue of public policy.
Do members wish to make any further comments under any other business?
I thank the secretariat and the staff of this committee. Sometimes we run through a lot of stuff at pace but an awful lot of work goes on behind the scenes. That must be acknowledged, as should the research that goes into this, the responses, gathering of data and everything. I put on record that it is appreciated.
I echo that. A great deal of work goes on. People only see an hour and a half or two hours of a meeting here but a massive amount of working hours go into all the gathering of information and going through the correspondence that comes through, as well as replying to it. I thank Ms Maggie Semple and the staff of the secretariat for making our job easy.
The committee adjourned at 2.37 p.m. sine die.