Seanad debates

Wednesday, 14 September 2011

2:30 pm

Photo of Ivana BacikIvana Bacik (Independent)

I join others in welcoming colleagues back. I hope that everyone has had a break over the summer and is ready for the busy and challenging term that lies ahead in which we all hope the Seanad will play a productive and valuable role and in which we will see further progress with the procedural reforms we have begun to make. The Leader referred to the format today for questions and answers with the Minister, Deputy Bruton, which I think we found to be a more valuable way of interacting with Ministers in this House when we had the Minister, Deputy Coveney, in previously. We also need to bring forward the reforms on public consultation and on inviting speakers, with which I know we will proceed.

We all look forward to the debates we will have today on jobs and innovation, tomorrow on transport, next week on the arts, and also on the important legislation, some of which carries a good deal of urgency, particularly the legislation on the referenda on judicial pay and on committee powers. In the context of the job creation debate, given the events of recent weeks, it is worth expressing sympathy with the workers in TalkTalk in Waterford at the closure of the plant and the manner in which it was announced, an issue which Senator Landy and others will raise this afternoon in the House.

Another momentous event that happened over the break was the tenth anniversary of 9/11. It would be useful to have a debate in this House at a future date, either with the Tánaiste or an invited international speaker, on the legacy of 9/11, on the international movement for democracy that we have seen develop this year and which has been called the Arab Spring, and on what we in this House and in this country can do to support those movements for democracy that are fighting so hard in Libya, Syria, Bahrain and other places and that are being suppressed brutally in some of those places. That would be a valuable way to honour the legacy of the many who died in 9/11.

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