Mary O'Rourke (Fianna Fail)

The understandable admiration Mrs. Lynch evoked in us takes away somewhat from the debate on clientelism. I will come to this again when dealing with Senator Ryan's contribution. Whether we like it or not, we live with multi-seat constituencies and on two occasions the people have refused to change this. Therefore, we are all susceptible to people who approach us. Leaving aside the issue of criminals, the situation has been muddied up by suggesting it is a waste of our time to write letters for people. My experience over a significant number of years has been that people need us to stand up for them to break through bureaucracy and have their rights aired. They need us to represent them——