John Gerard Hanafin (Fianna Fail)

I support the call of Senator O'Toole for the Government to consider using the postal service, working with the Communications Workers Union, to ensure the electoral register is properly maintained. It is obvious that postal workers could do such a job as an addendum to their current work and they should, of course, be paid appropriately. We could also use technology to process details of returned mailshots. They could be sent to the franchise section of each council for somebody to check a person's details. It is a targeted approach to ensure the electoral register is correct.

I also support those Senators who raised the situation in Gaza, in particular the terrible murder of three children. I am a supporter of Israel and its right to peacefully survive and thrive, and will continue to be so. Israel was born out of the camps of Europe, Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Ravensbrüch and Dachau, when people who had no other place to go congregated in Israel and formed a new state with a parliamentary democracy. Given such a history surely they realise it is not those who inflict the most but those who suffer the most who eventually prevail.