Brendan Ryan (Labour)

This legislation is a classic example of the sort of work Seanad Éireann can do that will not be done anywhere else. I appeal to the Minister to let the debate persist. If we vote it down now, the people who believe it is necessary will begin again. Their agenda is not political but relates to our heritage. They want to see the resolution of what they believe to be ambiguity. Perhaps the Minister can offer clear, unequivocal advice that there is no need for this. Apart from the issue of the register of arms, there are other issues regarding quality, services, accessibility and copyright, and I hope the Minister will deal with them.

I ask the Minister not to let us get involved in an argument about details in this legislation that the Minister feels are inconsistent. In the past two years I have been responsible for two Government Bills having to return to the Dáil late in the summer because they contained mistakes. If the Minister wants the names of these Bills I will tell him. One of them, the National Economic and Social Development Office Bill, had sat in the Dáil for four years and contained a fundamental contradiction. Any inadequacies or mistakes can be remedied on Committee Stage. That is what Committee Stage is for and we can have a long, leisurely reflection on this over Christmas and pursue it gently in the new year. The alternative is to vote it down, in which case the same people will begin it again in January. Until they are convinced that there is no need for it, this issue will surface, as it has done intermittently for the past 60 years.