Joe O'Toole (Independent)

It is normal on the Independent benches to ask a Member who served with the deceased to speak. Senator Ross is the only member of our group who served with Luke Belton but he has deferred to me in these circumstances, which I appreciate.

I did not realise when I married my wife that I was marrying into the Belton family and that, from then on, weddings, funerals and all sorts of occasions would include the Beltons. Luke was a generous man who fought his way up and stayed up. It was always a constant fight for him and was never easy. What the Leader refers to as the change in his constituency was much more than that. Luke's interpretation of that change was that the party head office dumped people on top of him by transferring Pat Lindsay from Mayo to take him on in an extraordinary election, which Luke was supposed to lose but, in the event, won by one vote, as I recall — I have not had time to check the circumstances.

He also served in this House as Government Whip. The first occasion I came into this august room was sometime in 1981-82. I called to see Luke Belton, as I was required to do for family reasons, although I was in the building on other business. I met him running out of the ante room and down the corridor. I asked him how he was. He replied, "I can't talk to you, Joe. O'Leary is voting against the Whip." That was the time when there was a left wing in the Fine Gael Party——