Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I know that they are only plastic, but because of what happened in this State and country over 30 years, I never bought a toy gun for any of my children, owing to the repulsive overtones to which we had all had to adjust. I find the idea of children marching, even with plastic guns, along O'Connell Street, repulsive and incompatible with the newly averred commitment to peace and democracy. I pay tribute to the Protestant clergymen in Northern Ireland who have stood at interfaces in periods of intense sectarianism with their Roman Catholic neighbours in their defence against the more extreme forms of loyalism. We need to do so.

I was taken by a phrase the Taoiseach used. He said that we must make this island a warm home for everyone. Of course, we all agree. At the risk of rankling ever so slightly, I wonder whether the Mater Hospital and St. Vincent's Hospital are a warm home for Protestants after the events that were uncovered this week.