An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2022-06-16
============================================================

Rónán Mullen (IND), National University of Ireland

I understand that. The Cathaoirleach might stop the clock for a moment as I want to make a point of order on that. I have no intention of criticising the President and I have no intention of seeking to hold the President to account, but it must be possible to say in this House on occasion “agree with this” or “don't agree with that”. If we lose the power to do that, we lose the power to be Senators. We need to talk about that. I do not mind the Cathaoirleach interrupting because I know he does it in the best of faith and he has his job to do. We must get clarity on that point at some point. I am not going to launch into an attack on President Higgins but if we cannot mention something in passing, even to enlighten and give context, while The Irish Times can, it makes a nonsense of what we are about. We really do need to get to the bottom of that.

---

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/2022-06-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-06-16