JOINT COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AND FAMILY AFFAIRS debate -
Tuesday, 9 Sep 2003

Vol. 1 No. 12

Business of Joint Committee.

Chairman

I thank my colleagues and welcome them back. I trust they had a nice break. We are about to address some of the decisions we took in regard to scrutiny.

A number of items of correspondence have been received and circulated to members, including a list of decisions taken by the sub-committee on EU scrutiny after a meeting on 24 July 2003. None of the documents have been referred to this committee for further scrutiny. We have also received a consultation paper from the Department of Finance on the proposal to introduce a carbon energy tax. The annual report for 2002 of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency has also been forwarded to us. Statutory instruments Nos. SI 323, SI 324, SI 341, SI 342, SI 359 and SI 372 have been received from the Department of Social and Family Affairs and statutory instrument 372 is being circulated at this meeting. These are background documents on secondary legislation implementing various matters.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has asked that COM (2003) 270, which deals with services of general interest, be circulated to each member for observations. We will continue in private session in this regard.

The joint committee went into private session at 2.08 p.m. and resumed in public session at2.10 p.m.

Chairman

The National Council on Ageing and Older People has written to say it is pleased to accept our invitation to attend a meeting of the committee on Tuesday, 23 September at 2 p.m. to discuss submissions to the committee on the future of full-time carers. That is one of the groups that will be coming in; there are five or six altogether. Mr. James Kehoe has accepted an invitation to attend a meeting on 7 October. This has been circulated today. He is the co-author of a report on the future of financing long-term care in Ireland, on which we wanted someone to give a presentation. The Department of Finance circular enclosing details of a training course on the parliamentarian's role in combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism has also been circulated today. That will be noted.

Our next major meeting is on 23 September, at which there will be a presentation by six groups on full-time carers. We decided to invite a cross-section of groups dealing with this issue, including the National Council on Ageing and Older People, a national group representing the elderly; Dergfinn Partnership, a Finn Valley cross-Border carers' support group based in Donegal and Tyrone; Development Managers/Co-ordinators of Services for Carers, a group comprising representatives from the North-Western, Midland, North-Eastern and Southern Health Boards, from three of which we received submissions - we are still awaiting confirmation of this group's attendance; Women in the Home, a national group representing women caring for all categories of people requiring care; Community Connections, a north Leitrim-west Cavan carers' group; and Caring for Carers, a group based in County Clare. The meeting is expected to last for four hours, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., on 23 September. The six groups will represent the broad spectrum of interests behind the 70-odd submissions that we received. We have already heard from some of the organisations involved.

The next item is scrutiny of EU documents. Deputy Ring was correct; we are dealing with this today.

Deputy O’Connor

It is nice to see Deputy Ring is not on the trail.

Chairman

Deputy O'Connor should not fire up the Deputy even further.