Donie Cassidy (Fianna Fail)

I will get back to Senator Norris during the week on the matter of his civil partnership Bill and report what progress has been made on it.

Senator Quinn spoke about our high dependency on energy and both he and Senator Norris have brought forward a motion, No. 16 on the Order Paper, which requests the Government to establish as a matter of urgency an expert committee to examine in an impartial fashion the feasibility, benefits and potential hazards of nuclear energy generation. I strongly suggest that they raise the issue during their Private Members' time. We would be delighted to support them in any way we can on that well worded motion.

Senator Quinn also mentioned the problems faced by the retail sector in which some 280,000 people are employed. I read yesterday in an article in one of the Sunday newspaper's that the sector was on its knees. We will do anything we can do to support it. This issue can be included in our pre-budget debate.

Senator Hannigan referred to the Multi-Unit Development Bill 2009. I shall make inquiries on how this is progressing. I gave the House an up to date report two weeks ago on that and I shall report to it later in the week again. Senator Keaveney raised the question of copyright, the rights of authors and intellectual property in general. This is a very serious area, where Ireland has had an enormous advantage because of our intellectual property rights regulations, which led the way in Europe in showing how cognisant we were of the significance of intellectual property. There is no difficulty in having a debate as regards the rights of authors.

We look forward to having more women in politics, and I must be very mindful, of course, of the views of my constituency colleague who is very experienced in this area and who has her views on this.