Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I too want to thank everybody involved in this, from the Office of the Attorney General and indeed the Law Reform Commission. I can only imagine the vast volumes of work and time, the painstaking work that had to be undertaken here to bring forward these badly needed changes. It spans from 1821 right up to 1861, including the Famine. I think of our forefathers, O'Connell, Michael Davitt, the Land League and everybody else from those times. I listened to the previous speakers and most of them recounted.

I defer to Deputies Barry Ward and Catherine Connolly, barristers who understand the law and the whole issue of updating it much better than I would as a layperson. They work in that area. How confusing it is for us and also for ordinary citizens to try to grapple with this. We are often slagged off as politicians where there are court cases, strange cases where the law is going back maybe hundreds of years or even much farther than that. The law should be clearly written in order that it can be understood by ordinary citizens. If they are expected to abide by the laws and obey them, the laws should be clearly understood.

We think of the different cases all over the country of people being summonsed, dragged, evicted, sent to execution or sent to Van Diemen's Land. We have a diaspora all over the world because they were forced to leave, mainly. At the time of the Famine, we had ample food in this country but the colonial power decided that it should be used elsewhere, not to feed our people. In my own parish, the ridges that were set up in Dún na Gaoithe are still there. They are clear to see on the side of the mountain. You can see from a distance the ridges that were set up to grow potatoes during the Famine, but they failed. The people who lived there were the O'Neill family and all the different families that we tend to forget. In many places now we see remnants of the Famine times. There are the big soup pots at Clogheen hospital in my own area, which was a workhouse and soup kitchen. There is one on the other side of my parish as well, Ballymacarbry soup kitchens. People were called "soupers" and different derogatory terms. It is so important that we understand our history as well.

I thank the staff, men and women I am sure, in the Departments and in the Law Reform Commission for this painstaking piece of work. As Deputy Barry Ward said, they will probably have to do more again in another 100 years when we are long gone. Maybe we should be able to speed up the process of coming up to date with these pieces of legislation so that any part of what is on the Statute Book would be understood before we can abide by it.

See this speech in context