Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the Government I want to thank An Ceann Comhairle for those remarks and I wholeheartedly agree with him. I thank him for the swift action he has taken. There is not a word he has said that I do not agree with but I want to thank the staff here, the ushers and An Garda Síochána for the work they did so professionally yesterday. They went above and beyond; let us be straight about it. While you will see this morning that we will not always agree on everything in this House, I will always defend the right of someone to have their say, and this is the democratic Chamber and these are the people elected by the people. To have a situation whereby people are hindered from going into the Houses of the Oireachtas, where people are going about their parliamentary business, is an attack on democracy. Yesterday was not a protest; that was thuggish behaviour. Protests are welcome here. We have all gone out and met protestors at various different things, raising points on behalf of people, families and their communities, but what we saw yesterday was unprecedented. On behalf of the Government I want to thank An Ceann Comhairle for his swift action and I want to thank An Garda Síochána and our staff here as well. An Ceann Comhairle can be assured of any support we need to give to support him in those endeavours.

On a separate matter completely, which I wanted to mention at the start of my contribution, and I hope An Ceann Comhairle will indulge me, a good friend and colleague who worked in Leinster House, Councillor Damien O'Reilly, unfortunately died very suddenly. We all knew Damien. I know this would not usually be the case but Damien worked here as a parliamentary assistant to Senator Davitt. He was such a pleasant, honest and hardworking guy. He was a young family man and he was taken far too soon. His funeral is happening as we are in the Dáil and hence many of us cannot attend but I want to pass on my personal sympathies and the sympathies of my party and Government colleagues to his family, his fiancée, his young daughter and his extended family and the community in County Meath, who have lost a magnificent councillor and a dedicated public representative.

See this speech in context