It was not just the Government that was less than generous. I have many good friends who are members of religious orders. I am still a quasi-Catholic and still put my foot inside the church, although one gets to a stage where the continual affronts to one's reason and generosity could push one in a different direction. Nevertheless, many of my good friends who are members of religious orders are among the most radical, genuine and committed people struggling for change in our society. Within all organisations, however, there seems to be an extraordinary capacity to separate what is done on the ground on a daily basis from the way they defend their own property and financial interests. It is worth repeating something my party leader has already said and which is a long-standing view of mine. The portrayal of Ireland in the 1950s which is behind many of the rationalisations for the low level of financial support from the religious orders is that the orders were doing the State's job and that the job would not have been done but for them. That is a true picture of the 19th century, when many of the Irish religious orders were set up, providing educational and other services for children who would otherwise have received no education. However, by the 1950s the dominant power institution in the State was not Oireachtas Éireann but the Roman Catholic Church. People know I am an admirer of both the 1937 Constitution and of Éamon de Valera and I have often said that the pressures de Valera resisted in the way he wrote that Constitution, given the demands of the Roman Catholic Church, were quite extraordinary. What he conceded to the church, he conceded knowingly and what he withheld, in terms of what the church wanted, was quite extraordinary.