David Norris (Independent)

I also welcome our new Member. There will be a further occasion to discuss the process of election and everything else but he is very welcome. It is good to have young people in the House.

With regard to the situation that confronts us nationally, these are apocalyptic times. We have an economic emergency and then are hit by the weather. As a trade unionist, I was extremely proud of the members of the front-line services who acted in a humanitarian response to the crisis. I commend them for this but wonder if the penny has dropped about the catastrophic seriousness of the financial position in which we find ourselves. I listened to people being interviewed and a number of them said they knew there would have to be cuts but they could not afford to them. They said they hoped their union or representative could find a way of doing it but that they did not know the solution. It reminded me of the late John Kelly who took James Joyce's comment about Ireland being the old sow that eats her farrow, turned it around and said the old sow was now in danger of being devoured by her cannibal piglets. If we consider what happened yesterday, I was proud of the trade unions in one sense but it is noticeable that there was a Gadarene rush to Newry which created a traffic jam two or six miles long. Where is the sense of patriotism? I call for it, just as I called for it from the other end of the social spectrum when bankers appeared to think €500,000 was not enough for them in an age when people were losing their jobs, homes and businesses. There is a need for a degree of patriotism. We have a situation that we confront daily in this House where, on the one hand, people want to get their elderly parents into hospitals and, on the other, younger people must be looked after, all at taxpayer's expense. We must come back to the State. When people talk about the State, they are actually talking about money taken in taxes from everybody, including old age pensioners. With the compensation culture, people do not realise that when they sue the State and look for compensation, it comes out of other people's pockets.

I raise a final point, which is a real scandal. I have raised in this House on a few occasions the case of the former head of the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association, ISME, who was the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice. This was established in this House. In recent years no less than six senior gardaí at the rank of superintendent, chief inspector and so on have been appointed. Every one of them resigned within either weeks or a few months of being appointed and no inquiry has ever been conducted. This is a scandalous cover-up and an abrogation of the human and civil rights of the person concerned. I call on the Leader to investigate the matter.