Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

As Deputy Lee was speaking, I thought what will RTE do without him this year for the budget as he is such a familiar figure but, of course, he will have the forum of the Dáil in which to give his opinions. I do not know how Fianna Fáil will accept it but RTE must greatly miss the Deputy.

I would dearly like to stand up here tonight and say we are all in favour of large increases in child benefit but we cannot do so. Every Member in the House well knows that it is easy to blithely say there are other ways for the Exchequer to get X number of millions or billions of euro. However, there are not.

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