Media Regulation Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-11 ============================================================ Mark Daly (CC), Administrative Panel Before I call the Minister of State to respond, I welcome the teachers and students from Lisnagry National School in Limerick. They are most welcome to Seanad Éireann, especially Tess Ryan. Tess's mother is Senator Dee Ryan. It is great to have Tess and all the class here. I believe they had elections last week and they elected a taoiseach. The students all had different political parties and the election of the taoiseach was followed by a motion of no confidence. It had something to do with chocolate and Tayto. The proper consumption of healthy food is an issue that we are struggling with in this House, and it is always a debate worth having. We are delighted to have Tess and the rest of the school here, especially with Senator Ryan here as well. I thank the teachers for bringing them here. I suppose it is not much good to them, but I was talking to Senator Ryan earlier about how one of the rules of the Seanad was that when a school came to visit, there was no homework for the rest of the week. However, I get the sense that there is probably no homework for the rest of the month, so the students might get no homework for their first week back, if that is alright. If they need a letter or anything in writing, they can send it on to me and we will make sure that the teachers obey the rules of the Seanad when they go back to school. I look forward to meeting the taoiseach. I believe the school has a ceann comhairle and leas-cheann comhairle as well. We could take lessons from the students in relation to running the school and the class, so I thank them for being here. All the way from the Parliament of Tasmania is Jen Makin. I thank her for visiting the House as well. She might give the school some tips. Previously known as Van Diemen's Land, some famous Irish people went to Tasmania as guests of the Crown, which is another way of saying "prisoners". We used to have a statue of Queen Victoria at the front of Leinster House that we eventually sent to Sydney in Australia. If any of the students ever end up in Sydney on a visit, they should go and see the statue outside the Queen Victoria Building in the downtown area. There is a plaque that says the statue used to be outside the Parliament of the Irish people and was given through the generosity of the people of the Republic of Ireland. What I love about the statue is that the arc of history and justice bends very slowly, but after Queen Victoria sent so many Irish people to Tasmania and Australia, the Irish people eventually sent her. Does Senator Ryan wish to say anything while the school is here? --- 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/2026-06-11/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:03+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-11