Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We have gone past the stage at which we had to abandon proceedings last night. We have come back and the Ceann Comhairle has made a ruling. We are where we are but we are going around in circles. We are sending the Bill to the Seanad and expecting it to fix our problems. I know it will come back to Committee Stage here in the House but clearly we are sending out conflicting messages. One basic flaw is that we do not know whether there is going to be 13 members on this so-called board or 17 as the Minister, Deputy Ross, had been looking for.

I do not know where the Minister is. I have called on him several times. He was here for the votes and he cleared out again like the flight of the earls. He was gone like a flash. Perhaps the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, is afraid of contagion and does not want Deputy Ross near. I do not know what is going on but tá sé as láthair arís. He did not have the you-know-what to come in and marshal his own Bill, to be here for support or to be here to look at us or to make body language, gestures or whatever at us if he would not talk. He could write and talk all he wanted for decades in the newspapers and could solve everything, but now we have this Bill.

This Bill changes little and does not address any real problem. That is my opinion. There is a real need for the legal profession to be reformed. I was in a technical group with him for five years before this present incarnation of the Government, and Deputy Ross had all kinds of ideas about what he could do and what he would not do. To be unfair to myself, jakers I believed him. I thought he was a bit of a whizz-kid and that he had the knowledge and expertise. I thought that he had friends in legal places, not including Deputy O'Callaghan who would not have been here at that time, and that he knew what he was talking about. It now looks like he knew nothing about what he was talking about and was only making it up. He was a fake. It was fake news. He was here before President Trump ever came around. He had the fake news and the fake dreams. It was all fake. The real judicial problem is controlling the power of the King's Inns. I mean no disrespect to my learned friend from the King's Inns. I think Deputy Thomas Byrne might have gone through it as well. I have no problem with that. I have never been over there, I just look at it in awe.

See this speech in context