Brendan Ryan (Labour)

If to make a strong and passionate speech about it is to rant, then I am quite happy to rant. We saw yesterday what I was talking about last Thursday night — people who have no morality, no politics, no understanding of justice or law and who have revealed themselves to be precisely what they are, namely, murderous thugs. Whether they are elected to Dáil Éireann or not, when they are killing people they are murderous thugs. They are not republicans and they serve no purpose other than to hold back progressive politics and republican politics in this State. The newspapers made it clear yesterday. We now know well what we all tried to avoid looking at for the past ten years, namely, that we have murderous thugs in our midst who must, once and for all, stop what they are doing, go away and retire and let those of us who believe in democracy get on with the job of democracy.