Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Thank you. We all join in extending our good wishes to Senator David Norris, who is a very active member of this committee. We are sorry to hear that he has had a little setback. We hope that it will be temporary and we will ask the secretariat to extend to him the best wishes of this committee.

I would also like to mention the loss of our previous clerk to the committee. We have a new clerk, Brian Hickey, and we thank Martin Groves for his tremendous work and support during the period in which he was clerk to the committee, and we wish him well in his new post. Similarly, we welcome Brian Hickey to this very onerous post. We promise not to make life too difficult for him.

I ask committee members and witnesses in the public gallery to switch off their mobile phones as they cause interference.