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

We will not entertain it and we will not have it. I want to know exactly what could possibly be wrong with fishing, hunting or with the gun clubs whose members have approached me. They go about their normal pursuits as well.

While we recognise that we must stick with the programme for Government if we signed up to it, I do not know if there is any way the Minister can assuage those of us in the backbenches who do not believe that if he gets this under his belt he will be free to roam again among the hedgregrows, the fishing loughs and the streams where harmless pursuits are carried out. We believe in those harmless pursuits - as well as other pursuits which might not be as harmless - and the Minister will have to give a guarantee on the floor of the House that this Bill and the Bill to be taken next week - which he inherited from the former Minister, Deputy Dick Roche - will be the end of his ramblings in rural Ireland.

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