Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I join with other Senators in paying tribute to John Hume who for 35 years was at the centre of practically every creative initiative to bring peace to Northern Ireland. We need to give him and his colleagues credit for averting or at least mitigating disaster.

While on the subject of the peace process, there are at least a couple of people in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform who played a quite outstanding role in that process. While we are discussing what happened last week, I point out that the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, said that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform took full personal responsibility for the arrangements. We should not go down the track of criticising civil servants for what are and ought to be political decisions.