Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senator for raising this issue. It might surprise him to hear that when I started off as a young co-operative manager many years ago in Cornamona, it was impossible to get money from the banks. Therefore, some things do not change. I applied to the ACC for a loan on behalf of the co-operative and decided the second time round that I would not leave anything to chance. Therefore, I rang the chairman of the ACC who happened to be called Michael Collins and a nephew of the Michael Collins to whom the Senator referred. He also had been a very good friend of my mother when they were children. I will always remember the day I got through to him in Clover Meats. When he came on the telephone, I started to explain who I was and what I was about, namely, that I was trying to raise some money for the co-operative. However, he interrupted me. "Tell me," he said, "Are you Emer's son?" I said I was and he replied, "Tell your mother I was asking for her." Then he asked me my business and I must say the co-operative got its loan, is still going strong many years later and that its offspring have created many jobs. Any notion that there was bad blood between the de Valeras and the Collins family, certainly on our side, would be very wrong. My personal experience of all the Collins family-----