If the Senator had his way we would have a year for the debate.

First and foremost, I second Senator Gavan's amendment to the Order of Business. I echo what Senator Black said. She is 100% correct about the Debenhams workers. It always amazes me that when these companies go bust, they walk away and leave behind a trail of utterly decimated workers, some of whom end up on the breadline. I fully support what the Senator said. It is time we had a debate on bullying in the workplace. I was horrified last week to hear on "Today with Claire Byrne" the way staff are treated by some of…

It is just after the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month and I pay tribute to the former taoisigh, Enda Kenny and Deputy Leo Varadkar, as well as the current Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, who all attended remembrance services at Enniskillen. It is great that Ireland has grown up and comes to remember the approximately 30,000 Irish men and women who lost their lives in the First World War and the Second World War. It is truly great that we are now able to remember them openly. An issue has arisen in the …

I hope the clock has been stopped.

All of us in the House are elected and we are all public representatives. We are all peers in the House. None of us has the right to information ahead of anybody else. I will write today to the Secretaries General of every Department to ask them to take on their responsibility as the administrative heads of their Departments to ensure all Members of this House and the Dáil are treated equally. I understand the cut and thrust of politics and that we all try to make names for ourselves. Every now and then we take on …

I welcome the Minister to the House. This is the first time I have met him as Minister for Defence in this House so I congratulate him on his appointment. I also congratulate him on the fact that he has not appointed a Minister of State to work under him in the Department of Defence and has taken a hands-on position. He has met the representative bodies and visited a number of centres and units throughout the country. I am 100% behind him. I want to work with him and see him achieve the things he has told me he wan…

How can that be followed? I have two things to raise this morning. One is that we hear constantly that the HSE is looking for people to work in the area of tracing. An entire army of veterans is available who are only too keen to come back to drive people to medical appointments, do tracing work and anything asked of them. Several of the veterans' organisations around the country are already doing things like shopping for older and vulnerable people using their own cars and paying their own costs. What are we offer…

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House and I understand he is under pressure. There have been 13 review reports and three Bills - four, if we include this one - and another Bill is coming in the next few days, and nothing has happened.

That is fine. I compliment the two Senators on bringing forward the Bill and admire their honesty. I particularly admire the honesty of Senators Cassells and Kyne who opened up the real issues that annoy the people of this country. One such issue is the 11 Senators nominated by the Taoiseach, where we could bring in people from diverse backgrounds but do not. Rather, we bring in our own political party representatives. Despite what has been said during the debate, the Chamber is a replication of the Dáil, which is …

-----and legislation was ruthlessly scrutinised and it did not bring down a Government when it failed. That is the sort of Seanad that I want to be a party to. I want to be here to look at legislation from the labour perspective, which is the panel I am on, and comment on it based on how I think it will impact on labour. My colleague, Senator Martin, spoke about two buses passing and that one has to get on the third one when it passes. There is no point in being on the bus if it is going in the wrong direction or l…

I second Senator McDowell's amendment to the Order of Business.

This weekend is very special for all of us who wore uniforms, irrespective of where we wore them. It is the weekend on which we would commemorate the armistice and the loss of Irish lives in the First and Second World Wars. More importantly, 8 November, this weekend, will be a very poignant day in Irish military history because we will remember 60 years since the Niemba ambush, when Lieutenant Gleeson, Sergeant Gaynor, Corporals Kelly and Dougan, Privates Farrell, McGuinn and Killeen, and Troopers Fennell and Brown…

We could send him to Galway too.

I second the proposal.

I compliment my colleague, Senator Murphy, on his speech and agree with everything he has said. We were promised that, when the schools reopened, there would be no particular problem with substitute teachers, etc. A number of principals of primary schools have contacted me in the past few days about the difficulty in finding substitutes. I was not a primary school teacher so I am not sure how the system works but I understand there are primary and secondary groups of substitutes. One principal told me of ringing 34…

Hear, hear.

Well said.

No, I will not press the amendment. I take the Leader's word that she will prioritise this issue and deal with it on the nearest possible date.

I came in here this afternoon with a very fixed set of views. The conflicts that are going on in my mind have been there since this Bill saw the light of day. Before I speak properly on the Bill, I want once again to condemn the way this legislation is being run through this House.

It is absolutely disgraceful. The Minister's name will be on the Bill and his party's name will be associated with it. What were they thinking that they would allow this to happen? Why would the Minister come in here and ram through legislation when he knows how wrong it is to do so? I have had nearly 4,000 emails to date from those on one side of the argument and a few hundred from those on the other side. I have also had some pretty harrowing phone calls, particularly from women of my own age group. I was born an…