PROVIDENCE — With the House of Representatives at a hiatus and House Speaker William J. Murphy about to head to Switzerland for a conference, the Senate will return to the State House Tuesday to deal with high-profile bills including a bid to ban indoor prostitution and a proposed statewide referendum on changing the name of this state.

It is unclear how many of those big issues the Senate will actually tackle.

Majority Leader Daniel P. Connors said it is unlikely to take up any legislation where House and Senate versions conflict and need to be reconciled. That includes the prostitution bill, where he notes “there are substantive differences between the House and Senate versions.”

But senators are expected to deal with dozens of topics where identical bills have been passed in each chamber, but no one version has made it through both. That includes the proposed referendum on the 2010 election ballot on whether to drop “and Providence Plantations” from Rhode Island’s official name, and a bill that would give same-sex partners the right to make funeral arrangements for their loved ones.

Also on a list of duplicate bills that still need final votes: a proposed statewide ban on organized pub crawls; a bid to eliminate mandatory minimum prison terms in some drug cases, and an effort to allow the police to obtain search warrants for blood-alcohol and urine screenings of suspected drunk drivers in serious accidents. The Senate may also vote on the House-passed bill to allow 24-hour gambling seven days a week and to force Twin River’s owners to drop their plans to suspend live dog racing on Aug. 8.

By late Monday, however, the posted calendar for Tuesday’s Senate session reflected almost none of these high-profile issues.

Connors acknowledged that leadership had yet to sort out what it would ultimately place on its agenda.

“There are literally boxes of bills upstairs that need to be reviewed,” he said. “The staff is going through it all.”

The majority leader also said that after Tuesday, he does not plan to bring the Senate back into session again this week — though it, like the House, may return later this summer to deal with unfinished business.

House leaders have not confirmed when they will reconvene, but with Murphy out of the country for weeks, no session is likely before late July.

The speaker leaves for Switzerland Wednesday on what he describes as a long-planned trip to attend a State Legislative Leaders Foundation forum on health care –– a meeting run in connection with the National Speakers’ Conference, of which Murphy is a past president. The five-day conference will be held at a luxury mountain hotel outside Zurich. From there he will continue on a family vacation with his wife and two children.

In an interview Monday, the speaker said he paid for his plane ticket out of his campaign funds and will finance the remainder of the trip, including his family’s expenses, out of his own pocket. No state funds will be used, he said.

Murphy defended his decision to leave the country before the General Assembly has adjourned, insisting that he has been available since stepping off the rostrum early Saturday to deal with any unresolved issues. “The bottom line is that we were able to finish our work on Friday, [June] 26 … we passed a budget that was a very good budget in tough economic times and we’ve done some great work. We’re not going to let the Senate dictate our timetable. We had ample time to finish both sessions on Friday and the Senate chose to go home.”

His comments reinforce what has been called an unusual breakdown in communication between the House and Senate in the past week. House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox alluded to it in his call for a recess at 1 a.m. Saturday. The Senate had gone home at close to 10 p.m. Friday.

“We have not had much discussion with the Senate relative to passage and trading of bills as you know we normally do,” Fox told the chamber.

Connors declined to comment on the matter.

With reports from Katherine Gregg

cneedham@projo.com