Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to introduce this Bill and I thank everyone who spoke. It has been well debated and it had approval from everyone, with one exception. I express my appreciation to the Minister in particular for his support of the Bill. I found it a useful exercise to put the Bill forward. Senator Terry referred to going back through the 1956 Act and that was a reminder to me of our duty in this House to scrutinise every Bill that comes through. It was interesting to see names from the past – Mícheál O Móráin, Frank Aiken, a friend of my father's, and Stephen Barrett, a man I knew well. Those names from the past were very concerned about the words "Irish associations" but it got through the legislation and now here it comes again many years later. We should remember we are not debating the rights and wrongs of whether passports should be issued in this way but the fact that there are no rules other than "Irish associations". This is the weakness in that legislation. We are examining something the Houses missed in 1956 from the perspective of this Bill.

I appreciate what everyone has said about the Bill. Senator Henry used a good word when she said our passports were debased. My attention was drawn to a novel, The Sigma Protocol, by Robert Ludlum, a popular writer. Page 249 states: "Some of those international businessmen, you know, have second passports from places like Panama or Ireland. They come in handy sometimes." We were mentioned alongside Panama, and Panama may be worthy in this context, but that is what happened when we produced a system with no statutory controls. My sole purpose in introducing this Bill is to avoid us ever doing something like that again without having in place statutory controls.

Senator Leyden mentioned that Britain, Canada, Singapore and others have similar systems but those systems have statutory controls. It is possibly a different view. Any debasing of Irish passports was anathema to Senator Ormonde, but she also said that there may be a time when we should introduce these again in some form or other and she also mentioned the need for statutory controls.