Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

If there are nuns listening, I would like to say something they have not heard in this Chamber until perhaps right now. Thank you very much. Nobody has said thank you, either in government, out of government or in opposition. All everybody has done is try to pick fault and find everything possible wrong with this because of this anti-religion agenda in Ireland at present. It is absolutely outrageous.

I was talking to an extremely intelligent person the other evening. He was watching this whole debate going on over the past couple of weeks. He was listening to all of the different political commentary. Of course he spoke about the hatred that seemed to be seeping out of certain politicians' mouths when they were speaking about the Religious Sisters of Charity. His comment was along the lines of, "Why did the sisters do it this way and why not that way?" Quite simply, it is because they own the land and they wanted to do it this way. It is extremely fair to have a 300-year lease at €10 per year. What part of that do people not understand? That is, in effect, gifting it to the State. If this is the way they want to do it, and if these are the rules they are laying down, is that not fine and well and good? Why can people not accept that? It is because people want to forget and ignore the good work done by the Catholic Church in Ireland. Of course bad things happened, and of course there were bad people. There were bad priests, but there were bad people in every walk of life. Think about the extremely kind and good people, young boys and young girls, who were devoted and gave up their lives for what they believed in, which was God. Of course, an awful lot of politicians cannot believe in God because they think they are God themselves.

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