Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I apologise to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if I am even more incoherent than usual. I had not expected to speak on this debate, but there was a misunderstanding over the number of speakers and I was called upon at short notice.

I have read the Bill and the Minister's script and there is a great deal in them with which no sensible person could disagree. I know many people who have been in prison, although I have never been a prisoner. On two successive weeks I had the extraordinary experience of lecturing in Portlaoise Prison to those calling themselves political prisoners, although I do not recognise them as such. I am notoriously prickly about things and I am not sure it is appropriate to have a Member of the Oireachtas searched and have everything of significance taken from his pockets. The typical argument is that such measures are taken to protect me from the prison population but I am not persuaded of that. I think it is deemed simpler to carry out such actions than to make exceptions for certain people with a role in the legislative process.

I went through four sets of double doors to reach the platform from which I addressed IRA prisoners one week and Irish Republican Socialist Party, IRSP, or Irish National Liberation Army, INLA, prisoners the next.