David Norris (Independent)

I support Senator O'Toole's concerns on bribery. It appears extraordinary that just one side of the equation is prosecuted. For a bribe to be effective, someone must make it. The initiation of the criminal act comes from someone other than the person who receives the bribe and he or she must be taken into account.

This leads me to comment on Senator Terry's remark. She called for a debate, which I support, on construction workers. Fair is fair – one must maintain proportionality. How could the construction industry be expected to maintain full contributions when it was contributing so generously to the pension arrangements of people like Mr. Redmond? They must live in the real world.

On Senator Tuffy's comments about a debate on whether we are using our time properly in the House, I think that would be counter-productive. This would be seen by the media as another bit of navel gazing. At my age, my navel has been gazed out of existence so I could not agree with this proposal.