An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-22 ============================================================ Gerard P. Craughwell (IND), Labour Panel I thank everybody for their offers of condolence and in particular my group which stood by me for the three months that Helen was in hospital and the hospice. It is a pretty shocking thing when you get notice and are told you likely have a year ahead of you, when that year shrinks to a couple of weeks. Over the next couple of Orders of Business there are a number of things I want to address. Helen was very accepting of her fate and she set about planning everything to do with the end of her life. That included such things as enduring power of attorney, the advanced health declaration form, the hospice itself and how she wanted her final burial carried out. It was extraordinary at times to visit her in the hospice and find the level of good humour I found. She was still able to take the mick out of people and to deal with some of the horrendous things that were confronting her. Her love of her children and her grandchildren was palpable all of the time. The one thing she was adamant I would do was to use the office I have to point out some of the issues that families encounter at this time. Some of these are issues we all should be thinking about today and are some of the things we should be doing in preparation for the end of our own lives. None of us knows when we get up in the morning that we will go to bed that night or when we go to bed at night that we will get up the following morning. It takes a person of extraordinary courage and strength to sit down, having been given her diagnosis, to engage with me on things like the kind of music she wanted for her funeral. One of the amusing things she said to me at the time was "I wonder will Micheál Martin attend my funeral". I laughed and said there was no chance of that. She said, "What about the Defence Forces? You spend your life talking about them. Will I get a guard of honour?" I said I doubted that very much. I remember the day before we went to the church the funeral directors contacted me saying they needed to talk about protocols. I asked what protocols they meant and they said the Taoiseach was going to be represented at my wife's funeral. I said, "Jesus, do not do that to me, she will sit up." The Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces and the Ceann Comhairle were represented, and many Members of this House and the Lower House contacted me. It was in the middle of holiday season and people were away and not able to attend, but there is a massive comfort in having people come to you at a time like this and sympathise with you. Looking around the Chamber here now, I do not think any of us can possibly understand what it is like. I went away for a week to try to clear my head once everything was over. I came back at 10 o'clock on a Friday night and turned the key in my front door. I walked in the door and the silence was deafening. I walked into the conservatory and switched on the TV set and the bloody sound would not work. I looked towards the heavens and I said, "You really are having a laugh now, aren't you?" At the end of the day, that silence is there every day. Her beloved dog, Pickles, is in the house, and the lazy so-and-so will not move himself. He just curls up in a ball and lies down. Every now and then he goes out and looks up the stairs to see what is happening and comes back in and sits down, but for company I would be better off with a teddy bear. I really do thank colleagues and over the coming days I want to deal with those things, such as enduring power of attorney, the advanced health declaration and the hospice. When we were told Helen was going to the hospice I thought "death". Never once did anybody in the hospice mention the words "die", "death" or anything like that. Thursday night in Our Lady's Hospice in Harold's Cross is the place to be if you fancy a drink and a bit of music because the bar opens and it is a great night. I will leave it at that and will come back on the other stuff over the next few days. --- 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/2026-09-22/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-22