Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is sad. I would like more but, like financial constraints, there are time constraints as well.

I compliment Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan on bringing forward the motion. It serves to focus on the issues. It serves to remind us as well that we have options now. We did not have options a few years ago; we had only the one way to go.

The options now are that we travel along cautiously and carefully and in a couple of years' time we will have got back to a position where we will again be in control of our own destiny because we have not been up to now. We should pay a great tribute to the Members on all sides of the House, the staff in the various Departments and the people who carried the burden over the past number of years, and who will still carry the burden. It has not been easy. It was never going to be easy. As they say in a certain advertisement in relation to a certain game, they never said it would be easy. That is quite true.

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