----and to create mayhem. That is what you are about. Anybody who uses two fingers in this House to another person is wrong and that person should apologise.

That would apply to Deputy Lowry. Equally, you should face up and acknowledge that any Deputy waving cameras in the face of other Deputies is wrong. That was never a part and parcel of Leinster House.

Equally, the intimidatory barracking of newly elected TDs, be they Independent or not, simply because they support the Government is a new low that I have never witnessed before in this House.

Whatever you think of Deputies Heneghan and Toole, they are newly elected Deputies. You have othered them, consistently pressurised them-----

-----and put them under pressure.

Your declaration of a lack of confidence in the Ceann Comhairle is a further instalment in your overall strategy, declared before this Dáil met, of total opposition.

You will do everything to undermine the institutions of this State, to which you have never been very loyal in your long history.

From the very get-go of this Dáil, you have made the life of the Ceann Comhairle impossible.

I endeavoured to speak yesterday. There has been very little commentary on this but it will have been clear to anyone who watched this on television yesterday. I endeavoured to speak yesterday for three minutes in response to Deputy McDonald.

Her Deputies, in a co-ordinated, strategic way, determined deliberately to make sure I did not get the opportunity to speak.

Deputies Doherty and Carthy and so on were orchestrated to shout me down, barrack and not let me have the right to speak. That is what happened yesterday. New precedents have been set in this Dáil by your co-ordinated strategy.

I know what you are about. You have been at it for a long time and your tactics are well known. However, they will be met by steel on this side of the House. You are not going to run the House, Deputy McDonald, and Sinn Féin will not run the House.

I am open to working with people as I have over the past five years on an ongoing basis.

I have been very clear from day one-----

-----about what Sinn Féin has been about in this Dáil. It was manifest on day one.

New precedents have been set. I do not believe this Dáil will ever be the same again-----

-----because of what has transpired over the past few weeks. It will never be the same again.

A prearranged what?

I will say to the Deputy that the Chief Whip worked extremely hard for over 20 hours with the Whips of other parties to resolve this particular issue.

By any stretch of the imagination it is stretching credibility to suggest that the resolution put forward by the Chief Whip in any way confers Opposition status on other TDs. I outlined that earlier when I reminded Deputy McDonald that in other parliaments it is a matter of form and norm that non-government deputies and government deputies who are not officeholders get to ask questions. The Deputy wants to deny that. What is the underlying issue here? That question has been asked. The underlying issue here is the f…