Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I am intrigued. There are two issues involved here. One is the status of the Irish language, about which Fianna Fáil can sometimes be very eloquent. I wish its deeds matched its eloquence but, nevertheless, there is a considerable group of people within Fianna Fáil with whom I would identify because of their genuine commitment to the Irish language. I am thinking in particular of people like Senator Ó Murchú.

A separate issue, however, is how in God's name the Parliamentary Counsel can advise the Minister of State that this is inappropriate when somebody else called the Parliamentary Counsel has inserted identical phraseology in other Bills? That question warrants a simple answer. If we end up with a situation where Government Ministers come to this House with contradictory advice because the individual in the Parliamentary Counsel's office takes a different view, we are not getting official advice, we are getting individual eccentric opinions.

All I want to know is how we can have two different pieces of advice from the Parliamentary Counsel about the Long. I do not have a major hang-up about this but I hate sloppiness. I also hate the fact that this House has spent a ridiculous amount of time on the matter. The Minister could have accepted these amendments in the other House and we would now be done with it. There is plenty of evidence that is the way some Parliamentary Counsel operate. Depending on whose desk it lands on in some office — although I am never quite sure which office it is — we will either have the Irish version or we will not. That is not the way to do business in 2006.