An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-19 ============================================================ Joe Flaherty (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach I want her to know the Fianna Fáil family is a very broad church. We have room and space in our party for everybody, even her, but obviously we did not have room for her gigantic ego. Leaving that aside, the Senator engaged in an outrageous diatribe against the Fianna Fáil Party. This party and all its members stand very proud of its achievements. My grandfather fought in the War of Independence, was subsequently imprisoned and went over and spent time in prison in the UK. He came back emotionally and mentally harmed from that, but he did his bit for Ireland. He was embedded in Fianna Fáil, celebrated Fianna Fáil and realised what Fianna Fáil was going to do. The Senator may smirk all she wants, but Fianna Fáil always made the hard decisions and we have never once set out to build our reputation on a history of bile, hatred, bitterness or hatred of women or women’s rights. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-19/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:57+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-19