Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

There have been requests in this House in the past week for a full debate on Northern Ireland. I know the Leader is doing everything in her power to ensure we have such a debate next week. Can she confirm that such a debate will take place? This would be very important, given the events of the past 24 hours. It is important that the debate would be full and broad and not confined to leaders.

I would prefer if we could have a one-day debate. I say that for the following reason. It is now clear that there is a difference between the Government parties on the issue which constitutes the ending of IRA criminality and violence. In this matter, a certain debt of gratitude is owed to the Progressive Democrats who have sought clarity on this matter in the past 24 hours.

We now discover that a side deal, which was not published and was not part of the discussions at the press conference this week, contains other information, such as that surrounding the release of the killers of Detective Garda McCabe and the information sought by my colleague, Senator Cummins, and by me on the issue of the two persons still at large for the manslaughter of Detective Garda McCabe.

However, there is another matter, that of Seanad reform. We now discover that the Government is attempting to give some seats in this House to the Northern Ireland parties and that this was part of a side deal. Whatever about the rights and wrongs of this position, I thought we were all of the view that Seanad reform should not be cherry-picked, that we in this House produced a body of reform proposals that would be taken in its entirety.