Pádraig Rice (Cork South-Central, Social Democrats)

I thank all of our witnesses for the time and effort that went into preparing those opening statements and that background. No doubt it is going to be very helpful for our consideration this morning but also with regard to the wider consideration of the Bill over the coming months.

We now move to some questions from members. As members know, we share a speaking rota and we will follow that rota, which has slots per party. We are going to allocate eight minutes for each person, and I ask members to try to stick to that time. I will cut them off at eight minutes to ensure everybody gets in. I know there is a lot of interest from members to speak on this morning, so we will try to stick to their eight minutes each. I want to flag that we will take a quick break in about an hour's time. It will be a five-minute comfort break.

On our speaking rota, the first slot is a Fianna Fáil slot.