Martin Conway (Fine Gael)

Yesterday I spoke about three people I met at the weekend who intend to emigrate to Australia. Some 100 young people have departed from the village of Kilmihil in my constituency in recent years. I assure colleagues on the other side of the House that none of those 100 gives a toss whether we have an embassy in the Vatican. It is an outrage that all we can talk about in this House, day in and day out, is the closure of that embassy. It is a further outrage that we have an amendment to the Order of Business on this matter. What is even worse is that the party leader of the Members concerned is making a huge issue of it in the other House as well.

We need to grow up. Our relationship with the Catholic Church has taken a hammering; everyone accepts that. What we need to do now is to rebuild it. Having an embassy in the Vatican when there is already an embassy one mile down the road is a complete waste of resources. Just because other countries have an embassy there, just because The Irish Times tells us we should have an embassy there-----