Mary White (Fianna Fail)

I welcome my friend Caitríona Ruane, a former Minister of Education in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and acknowledge her serious contribution to the peace process on this island. I compliment Sinn Féin on its timely tabling of this important motion and I am pleased that my party, Fianna Fáil, is supporting it.

The Good Friday Agreement was driven by the Fianna Fáil Party. I was privileged to be on the Fianna Fáil national executive when Albert Reynolds started to engage seriously with the different groups in the North, inviting those involved in the strife on both sides to come on board and work towards a peaceful solution.

As my colleagues Senator Mullen and Senator Walsh said, this presidential election is being driven by the media. Whoever they want to have running for the Áras is more important than what the people want. They are calling the shots. The media are driving the agenda for this presidential election. They have their pets whom they want elected, but they have issues with people such as Martin McGuinness. They do not want him and will not acknowledge his contribution to the peace process on the island. Many of them have never spent a day in the North. They have no feeling or empathy for the lives of the people in the republican and Nationalist communities. They have absolutely no understanding of what the people in the North went through.

President Mary McAleese is a woman from the North and we have Martin McGuinness as a candidate from the North. I cannot see why the people of Northern Ireland, who are allowed under the Good Friday Agreement to hold Irish passports - under the Agreement, each person has the choice of being a British or an Irish citizen - cannot vote in the presidential election. I always found it extraordinary that President McAleese could not vote for herself in previous elections.

I admire the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Hogan, who is a good person and has integrity, but I have a problem with some parts of his speech, which were written by a technocrat. I would like to draw the attention of the Minister to the words I am using. He stated that new legislation would cut the number of Deputies at the next election and that the Government would hold a referendum on the abolition of the Seanad and cut the number of Dáil committees. I do not want to hear about the abolition of the Seanad any more. I know my colleagues in Fine Gael, who were in opposition at the time, were shocked when Deputy Enda Kenny proposed that he would abolish the Seanad in government. They were as shocked as we were. Senator Keane might not like to hear me say that, but it is a fact. They were shocked that Deputy Kenny opportunistically raised it. How dare somebody use-----