Mr. Brendan Halligan:

Well, thank you very much, Deputy, for your very kind remarks. It has been a unique event, it called for a certain degree of creativity and co-operation and I want to thank all of those who were involved in that process. I hope that the committee will regard it as having been of assistance to it and its work and I'm sure that it will be regarded positively by the general public, many of whom who would have been able to see this transmitted live on TV. Again, I thank you for your attendance and for your adherence to the modalities which had been agreed. I would also thank your own staff, committee staff, who have been highly professional at all times, and it was a pleasure, indeed, to work with you. You can take it that I would also want to thank the two respondents, Dr. Somers and Professor Barrett for their contributions and it would be remiss of all of us if we did not thank the staff of the institute who have laboured heroically over the past month to make this happen. I think it is customary for a politician, even a former politician, to thank the owners of the hall for the use of the premises, which I now do, so I thank the Irish State for the use of the hall and thank the security forces and so on for ensuring that the thing went as smoothly as it did. But most particularly, I want to thank you, sir, for your presence here - I know you've had a very long day, you were up early this morning to get a flight which landed in here just after 11 o'clock. You still have some duties ahead of you. You're showing remarkable resilience and stamina and I want to thank you for all of that and most particularly for your disposition in dealing with the questions that were put to you, both by behalf of the members and also the members of the committee. So thank you very much being here and may I just maybe perhaps try to entice you to come back on some future occasion by giving you this history of Dublin, a city you have begun to express an interest in and its history. This is a 1,000-years-old city, as old as Paris, as you know and of course much more distinguished in terms of intellectual life and architecture.