David Norris (Independent)

I welcome the fact that my colleague, Senator Bacik, referred to the case of Mrs. Gill. I do not believe she would object to her name being used in this debate. Mrs. Gill is from a farm outside Birr in County Offaly in the heart of Ireland. Her daughter was killed in a road traffic accident. She desperately wanted her daughter's same-sex partner to be recognised but that was not possible. When one has this level of commitment to the sort of change we are seeking from middle Ireland, we must listen again. We must also listen to the voice of the children in question.

I hesitate to say the current position is unchristian. I will leave that to George Bush whose Christianity led him to bomb hundreds of thousands of people to extinction. I was never the media spokesperson for the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Dublin, as Senator Mullen was, and my habits of speech and intellectual curve, so to speak, do not always follow the Anglican model, from which I diverge greatly.

Phrases such as "sinister thought control" and "dangerous culture of political correctness" were used. Having been invited to place on record certain matters, I will do so. Senator Mullen will remember an occasion during a previous debate when he leaned across to me and said that if I continued he may have to rake up a certain article which appeared in——