John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

From a number of perspectives, they were very positive and helpful.

I have three points to make before I go to questions. First, I think everyone here would echo the Tánaiste's comments, and will echo his comments, about the Passport Office. It is an office with which every Member of the Houses interacts. We have all noticed the improvement, so please convey our compliments to it for its hard work.

I wrote to the Tánaiste on behalf of the committee in the last week saying that we stand ready to receive the heads of the Bill regarding the occupied territories. We have also ensured we can facilitate additional meeting time. I thank the clerks for doing that and working so hard behind the scenes on it. What would help us would be to know when the Tánaiste might be able to come because the committee has agreed that both he as the initiator of the Government's Bill and Senator Frances Black would be our first two witnesses. As soon as we could facilitate that, the better. That would be really helpful to us. Our first speaker is Deputy Shay Brennan.