Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

The Senator's contribution is interesting. She is now saying I was right to try to keep the supply alive. As we have a different approach and the same objective, how do we do it? What the Senator said was my starting point. It is how I thought we should do it, being simple and straightforward. There did not seem to be a problem. There was a problem when I examined it. It would have been the most simple thing to do and was my preferred option, but a number of issues would have arisen, of which one was the fact that it would have meant applying legislation retrospectively. There is no question about this and the advice available to me was that it was questionable whether one could do it under the law.