John Gerard Hanafin (Fianna Fail)

I, too, ask the Leader to arrange a debate on An Post. It appears turnover in the SDS side of the business will significantly exceed the forecast made by management. It seems the decision regarding SDS has been made, irrespective of the company's results and the commitments given to workers which the company was honour bound to keep and has not delivered. A serious question mark hangs over the conduct of management of An Post in this case.

I seek a debate on the North where the issue of humiliation has a special resonance, having been part of the problem since efforts were made to keep down even the civil rights movement. If one community believes it is being humiliated, surely those who produced the technical detail involved in the d'Hondt voting mechanism and provided such considerable resources to support it could find a formula to reach a satisfactory outcome to what appears to be a simple problem. If the approach is based solely on humiliation, the republican and Nationalist side could request apologies for the treatment of the civil rights movement and the manner in which Dr. Paisley denigrated the religion of which I am part. No such apology has been forthcoming.

My medieval history lecturer in University College, Cork, once said three things never change. I will not mention the first two because they refer to other countries but the third was the wars in Ireland. It would be dreadfully sad if that were to continue to be the case in this century. While the guns are silent, there does not appear to be much peace.