I am not surprised.

At the outset, I congratulate the Deputy Leader. From working with her in recent years, I genuinely feel that she has shown herself to be an extremely independent person and an independent thinker. She has been rewarded by being selected and now she has to go and do the hard work. I wish her well in that. On the referendum, I am becoming more and more concerned at what I believe are the attempts to usurp the McKenna judgment by NGOs that are largely funded by the State. In fact, up to 97% of their funding comes fro…

Before I launch into what I have to say, I understand planning permission would be required to remove the current Derrybrien wind generators. I will be objecting to that planning permission and taking this as far as I possibly can. I disagree with some of what the previous speaker said. We are talking about changing a law, not ignoring the law. Today, we heard a detailed and valid argument from my colleagues Senators McDowell and Boyhan. Nothing in the proposed legislation runs counter to the programme for Governme…

We have had a debate in this House on the proposed thirty-ninth and fortieth amendments to the Constitution. I call for an amendment to the Order of Business to bring the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, to the House to explain what knowledge the State had, before it set the date of 8 March, of a case before the Supreme Court, BM and JM v . Ireland and the Supreme Court. This is a case of the most systemic importance, according to the Supreme Court. That court allowed the case to leapfrog the Court of Appeal because of th…

With all due respect, if the Acting Leader had listened, she would know I said it leapfrogged the Court of Appeal.

We must be accurate in what we say.

I did not say-----

This is going beyond the simple question I asked.

I have indeed.

Absolutely.

They are being stretched now by the Acting Leader.

I would like her reply to be fairly accurate.

Why would I withdraw it?

On a point of order, my call was for the Minister to come here to explain-----

-----what knowledge he had when he set the date. That was it.

The Acting Leader has told me the Government knew about the case.

The Acting Leader just said the Government knew about it.

I thank the Acting Leader for confirming that.

No, I have queried what happened.

My question was about the date.