Rory O'Hanlon (Cavan-Monaghan, Ceann Comhairle)

I would like to make a brief reference to comments made yesterday concerning alleged omissions from the Official Report of Dáil debates. I wish to reiterate a ruling of the Chair on 11 May 1999:

It is a long standing tradition that the Official Report, although not strictly verbatim, is substantially the verbatim report with repetitions and redundancies omitted and obvious mistakes corrected but which, on the other hand, leaves out nothing which adds to the meaning of the speech or illustrates the argument. In this sense, the Official Report is intended to be a full report of the proceedings in the House. As Members are aware, the Official Report of the Dáil is published as unrevised and Deputies have up to 14 days after publication to bring corrections to the notice of the Editor of Debates who is responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the report.

It is well-established that the Official Report is the authoritative record of what is said. Members who raised the matter yesterday in a jocose way during Christmas greetings were not casting any reflection on the Chair or the professionalism of our editorial staff who do tremendous work, often very late at night, to produce the report of the debates in a very short turnaround time.

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