Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The group did plenty of lobbying with all the county councils in any event, in fairness to it. From my reading of it, these people have been talking to the families. This is what the families want. If everybody on one side is in agreement, we have two problems. The first is that three State organisations are supposedly responsible for making the decision as to whether the bodies can be exhumed and the second relates directly to the Minister for housing and local government, but, once again, nobody is taking responsibility for the decision. We are public representatives. We take on board the information that comes to us, but we also work for the public outside. A majority is normally the way things work in here. If every county council in the country is backing this campaign, it is a case of the old cliché whereby if 600 soldiers are marching and 599 of them are all out of step, it is everyone except my Johnny. It beggars belief. We could always mark the ground. I know the correspondence refers to the issue with the quicklime and so on, but we should stop making excuses.