Professor William Binchy:

Thank you, Chairman. It has been a long session and I will be brief. On the last point from Deputy Michael Creed, when I read in The Irish Times on 1 or 2 January about the State papers from 30 years ago I made a resolution to read them myself. They sound fascinating. If I am reading the newspaper reports correctly, the State papers seem to say that Mr. Sutherland, whose public response to the Fianna Fáil proposal in early 1983 is in the public domain, was opposed to the whole idea of a constitutional referendum on several grounds before Fianna Fáil brought forward its actual wording. The reasons he gave against the very idea of a constitutional referendum bore a striking resemblance to his critique of what emerged under the Fianna Fáil wording in 1983. This is a novelty to me - certainly, as far as I remember, not one word was said in 1981 or 1982 to show that Mr. Sutherland was opposed in principle to the very idea of a referendum. I hope my memory is not fallible on that. I intend to read the material when the dust settles on these Oireachtas hearings.