Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman for the opportunity to speak. I will not rehash everything everyone has already said. I am one of the two members who abstained earlier. I thank all the members who came to the table in private session to discuss the options we have. They tried to be flexible, to engage with everyone and to listen to everyone's viewpoint. All the various private sessions have been very helpful to me. In fairness to Senator Ruane, when she put down her first motion and all that followed, Deputy Kelleher then put down his counter-motion but a compromise was reached this evening to allow the process to move along. That is thanks to Deputy Jonathan O'Brien for coming forward. The matter was teased out at length in order to move it forward. What I will say to the dissenting voices in the room is that it was such a pity they did not engage because there was an opportunity there for their voices to be heard, as opposed to their sitting on their hands and not engaging. The whole reason of having a private session was that we could have heard all the voices present. That is what happened during the private session and for that I thank members.

I will be open and honest. I would have preferred not to have had a vote until the end of module 2 for the simple reason that I wanted as many people to come before me as possible. I was playing a listening exercise while participating. Some people have very well-formed opinions, whereas my opinion was not the most well-formed. At the same time, I have learned an awful lot as the committee's work has come along. This is why I would have preferred us not to have had a vote this evening. In fairness to all the 22 members here, we want to see progress. I want to be part of that progress and feed into it because we need to move forward and know what we are about. A lot of hard work goes on at this committee. Many people come with an awful lot of work done in advance, which needs to be acknowledged. It is unfair to say it is a skewed process and that people have very determined views. Everyone has a determined view. Let us be under no illusion. We all have a well-formed opinion but we must engage in our well-formed opinion and tease it out in order that we have a good result at the end. Ultimately, the people of Ireland will make a decision as to what option to take, and I look forward to that.