It strikes me – I say this with some circumspection – that the spirit of the day is one in which Ireland holds the shovel not to get on with constructing our future but to exhume the past. At some stage we will have to become much more prospective in our collective political focus. It is fashionable to talk about the need for full transparency, inquiring into events and bringing closure to them, but there is a limit to the extent to which the truth can be established in retrospect. There is also a limit to the extent to which any society should expend all its political and emotional resources looking backwards and trying to find out what happened when there are so many serious problems facing us in the mirror in terms of what we need to do in the future. While it is sometimes necessary to look back to prevent wrongs from being repeated, it seems that a successful, dynamic society has to have a focus on the future. This legislation, if passed by the two Houses of the Oireachtas, will make it easier to inquire into matters. I hope this does not mean the focus of political attention will be increasingly on the past because the fundamental purpose of elections and representative democracy is to plan our future and make sure it is successful.