David Norris (Independent)

I would like to raise the matter of pharmacies, which other colleagues have raised. It is very worrying. Once again we are in a mess. There are questions of employment, delivery of services to the public and a loss of jobs. We have all been involved in this over the years. It is ridiculous.

With regard to last night, it was a very good debate. We should welcome the fact that the Minister took on board the amendments, which many of us urged. It is a question of definition, however, and there were a series of very loose definitions.

I am astonished by the behaviour of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Dermot Ahern, in the other House. He has agreed to cut the fines for the blasphemy sections of the law from €100,000 to €25,000, and said yesterday in the Dáil that the draft of the legislation on blasphemy has been deliberately drawn up to make it virtually impossible to get a successful prosecution out of it. That is a very peculiar way to be drafting law. We are drafting law so that nobody can be properly prosecuted. It is a complete farce, a nonsense and an insult to the intelligence of the people. The whole question of blasphemy ought to be blown out of it.

I mentioned definitions. I cannot give the House a definition of blasphemy, but I can give a description of it. It is one we all heard and was printed in The Irish Times, that respectable newspaper, when that remarkable man, Mr. O'Brien, a former Fianna Fáil mayor of Clonmel, said: "They raped me, they buggered me, they beat the shite out of me and the next day put the Host in my mouth." That showed the most extraordinary disregard for God and man. That is blasphemy. The laws were in place at the time but they did not nothing to save that unfortunate child. Let us not have a pretence or a farce. Let us have real and properly drafted legislation and forget all this nonsense about blasphemy.