SEANAD:THE SEANAD was constitutionally far too important to be demeaned or diminished by using its seats as a barter or a trade in order to buy political security, Joe O'Toole (Ind) said.

He was commenting on speculation about the filling of the vacancies caused by the death of Tony Kett (FF) and the election of Alan Kelly (Labour) to the European Parliament.

It was unseemly, in his opinion, that an impression was being given that the Greens could be offered trinkets, in the shape of a seat, to buy them off and to calm them down after their election experience.

Mr O’Toole said the Greens might like to vote for an alternative candidate which those on the Opposition side would be putting forward. One of the vacancies to be filled had not been a Government seat. That should be respected and it should be ensured that it went to a non-Government person at the end of the day.

Frances Fitzgerald, Fine Gael leader in the House, asked when the byelections would be held and if an additional seat would be offered by the Government to the Greens as part of the ongoing political drama they were engaged in. Was it the case that these elections would not be held until the programme for government had been renegotiated?

Dominic Hannigan (Labour) said that when it came to the filling of Seanad seats, they should not be handed out to failed local election candidates. The last thing they could afford to do at present was to bring the House into further disrepute.

It was quite worrying for a lot of people that material on a laptop computer stolen from a HSE office in Roscommon could be used for blackmail purposes, Terry Leyden (FF) said. This was sensitive material that could affect people’s livelihoods as it related to the status of their health – their mental health – and, perhaps, to their dealings with social workers.

There was something very sinister about the robbery as it had been carried out in a strategic way and targeted specific computers.

He would question the apparent lack of security on this office. He did not think there had been a CCTV system in place. The Minister for Health should say what steps were being taken in HSE offices to protect such computers.