Deputy Eamon Ó Cuív:

Through all of this grief, which I think is European, crazy, bureaucratic madness, I pay tribute to the staff of the Department because they are dealing with an impossible situation. They themselves are always courteous and incredibly helpful to us in trying to deal with difficult problems for many constituents who are amazed at all of this and who never acted in bad faith and cannot understand the reason they are suddenly adversely affected by this issue. The officials say they wrote to them all.

I will conclude on this issue. I remember when I became a Member in 2002 we were all given a big book which contained everything to do with fire regulations and the fire safety of the House. Fire safety statements were written. As Members we should all have written it. I remember asking hundreds of my colleagues if they ever read it. I think I was the only one who ever looked at it; I looked at only to say that I had looked at it. Like every other human being, we are already overloaded with pages, and the more that comes the less that is read. They had done what everyone else had done, namely, just threw it up on the shelf and never read it. Then somebody will say to them some day: "You were given it; you are a TD and should have read it, as you made the laws that stated it was important that all this material was given to you." That is the problem.