Page 3307 - Week 11 - Thursday, 12 September 1991
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MS MAHER (5.34): As chairman of the Social Policy Committee, I would love to take on this reference; but I have problems with taking recommendations from other reports. Those recommendations should have been implemented from the reports already submitted. I also have a problem with the fact that our committee does not expect to report on its inquiry into behavioural disturbance among young people until the end of October. We would then have only November and early December to do a report.
People are complaining about lack of time. There will not be time for this present committee to do a report, and there is no guarantee that the next Social Policy Committee will take on the same terms of reference. There is no guarantee that, if this matter is put to the Social Policy Committee, it will ever be completed.
Mr Wood: You are the chair; you can crack the whip.
MS MAHER: You do not know what it is like to do any work on a committee. You have no idea of the problems, especially coming into an election and especially when we have the Estimates Committee in front of us. We have a lot of work to do. I do not agree with Mr Connolly's amendment. I think an independent inquiry will have more success.
DR KINLOCH (5.35): I am sorry that there is so much politicking going on on this issue. I had hoped, perhaps unreasonably, that this would be a matter everyone in the Assembly would approve of, and I find it strange that that is not so. I would like to back up Ms Maher's comments. I do not in any way impugn Mr Connolly's motives. He has impugned mine; I do not impugn his, and I ask him to read standing order 55. There are just some impossibilities about the Social Policy Committee taking this on. I am only echoing Ms Maher.
Ms Maher: They are going to have the same problem.
DR KINLOCH: Ms Maher, I am happy for you to look at our appointments book, but we already have meeting after meeting to lead up to the report we are now working on. From my point of view, this emerged from a discussion in the Social Policy Committee. Ms Maher was there; Mrs Grassby was there; I do not remember whether Mrs Nolan was there or not; Mr Stevenson was there. We all agreed that the question of youth and alcohol was absolutely vital. We were passionate about it. As a result, this particular matter has emerged.
It is absolutely nothing to do with a sentence in today's newspaper. This topic was in our minds over the week or so since the committee met, and it was a question of when we put it in. We would have put it in on Tuesday. The GALA report came out only yesterday and it confirmed the need
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