Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wrote to all the party leaders asking them to nominate somebody to serve on the implementation committee. As soon as I have all those names, and I assume every party will want to participate, under the direction of the Leader of the Seanad, Senator Buttimer, the first meeting will take place and the authors of the report, former Senators Manning and O’Toole, are available to give technical advice if necessary to the implementation group. I referred to this in the Seanad last week. As soon as the names come back from the parties, we will have the implementation group’s first meeting and get on with implementation. I hope that everybody will support it although there have been 11 reports on the Seanad over the past 35 years and there was never agreement, even from within the Seanad of the day. I hope that it will look more favourably on this.

Separate from that, the Minister of State with responsibility for the diaspora, Deputy McHugh, is pursuing the question of votes for emigrants and for those in Northern Ireland and we will move that forward as quickly as possible.

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