David Norris (Independent)

Whatever about heraldry, it is refreshing to discover that the art of prophesy has not vanished from the earth because Senator Kieran Phelan who, I am glad to say, is a representative of one of the distinguished septs of my own part of the country, Ossory, was able to imagine or prophesy in his typed-up script what Senator Ryan said. The Minister said on page three of his script or whatever it was — I pointed it out at the time — that nothing he had heard today had convinced him. He had not heard it when the speech was typed up so it is a complete and utter nonsense.

We are used to this in this House. We get it on matters relating to Standing Order 29 all the time. One puts down that one wishes to raise a motion under Standing Order 29 and the Cathaoirleach po-facedly says that he does not believe anything is contemplated by this Standing Order, no matter what it is. It does not matter whether it was an armed insurrection in Listowel or a volcano in Dún Laoghaire, it is not contemplated under Standing Order 29. This is all typed up and written out before we get to the point.

The Minister is a thoroughly decent man and I have many reasons to be grateful to him and not only for his enthusiastic support of cultural life in Ireland, in particular my own little baby, the James Joyce Centre in Dublin. The late Terry O'Sullivan, who wrote the Dubliner's Diary, after a huge feast of drink went back and snored in the offices of The Irish Press. Somebody asked him if he was going to write up the column after filling his face with all their food and drink and he said: "Let us astonish them by our ingratitude." I propose to astonish the Minister with my ingratitude and say that was an absolutely pathetic speech. I do not believe he concocted it himself. This was obviously a set up.

There is clearly a case for the proper authorisation of heraldry. Again, I can perhaps understand the feeling of the Department because this was also concocted by the people in the Genealogical Society of Ireland, and more power to them. We all get the society's gazette, called The Genie Gazette, which is sometimes very interesting. It is important we regulate the area for a number of reasons, one of which is the scandal that surrounded the MacCarthy Mór, which was a dreadful affair. It was laughable in one sense that this fellow was floating around Tangier with his boyfriend behind him and a poodle on a pink cushion claiming to be the MacCarthy Mór. Apparently, the nincompoops over here actually recognised him. How farcical can one get? One has to establish something that gets away from this sort of thing.