Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senators for an interesting debate. It is always good to come to the Seanad. It is very nice to hear people speak sincerely and address the problems without grandstanding. I have found that people speak from the heart more often in the Seanad than in the Dáil. It is impossible sitting here to distinguish the political label that attaches to party members because Senators share the same concerns.

There is another common factor that goes with the nature of the work that we do. One meets so many people in constituency clinics and one comes across so many problems in the course of a week that they tend to make the individual problem the general proposition. Therefore, it moves from the individual to the general and very often, I respectfully suggest, the generality of taxpayers can be forgotten. Nobody speaks for the generality of taxpayers because everybody speaks for some individual or group of people who are finding things very hard. That is not to say that I disagree with a lot of what has been said here this evening. How much time do I have?