Susan O'Keeffe (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Along with fellow colleagues, I would like to send my best wishes to Senator Norris. I also send my best wishes to Senator Harte who, I understand, went back to Donegal yesterday, which is a good sign. We wish him well and hope the airs of Donegal will restore him to health. Like others, I welcome the appointment of Deputy Fitzgerald, as Minister for Justice and Equality, and Deputy Charles Flanagan, as Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, and wish them well in their future work. They are good appointments. As Senator Keane said, it is good to see the girls aloud will make their contribution along with their male colleagues.
I welcome the resignation of former the Minister, Deputy Shatter, not because it is a good thing to lose a good man and a hardworking Minister but because it is a sign of our growing understanding of the need for accountability in this country in that when a report comes back and states that there are faults and failings, the person concerned stands up and states that it was on his or her watch and that he or she is resigning. I also welcome it because it strengthens the position and status of whistleblowers, in particular the whistleblowers in this case, John Wilson and Maurice McCabe. They have had, to put it mildly, a particularly difficult time. Their status has been enhanced and I trust whistleblowers in the future, who take risks as they did, will not have to put up with and endure the difficulty and indignity they had to put up with both at the hands of their colleagues and the wider public. What we have seen in the past 24 hours - the resignation of the former Minister, Deputy Shatter - is the first in a series of steps we will need to take which I trust will be taken to restore full confidence in the justice system in this country, in particular for the many hard-working decent upstanding members of An Garda Síochána who will be tarred with the activities of a few.
On a separate note, I take the opportunity to welcome the launch of a new website for politics for teenagers tomorrow. It is a website I have mentored with a group of students from St. Attracta's Community School in Tubbercurry. They have written the website and done the research. It is the first example in the world where teenagers have written and put together a website themselves for themselves to try to encourage more young people to consider and understand the role of politics in our daily lives. They have usefully called this website oblivious.iebecause, as they said, teenagers are, by and large, oblivious to politics and the political arena. I would like to thank them for their work and University College Cork, IT Sligo and Senator Mary Ann O'Brien for their support and say it was a pleasure to work with them and to see their interest in the political arena and politics grow.
Members might be entertained to know that Senator Bacik told the students when asked in their survey that she would in another life like to have been Lady Gaga while Deputy Martin, the leader of Fianna Fáil, said he would have liked to have been Muhammad Ali. That gives Members some clue as to what the content might be. I hope they are raising a smile and encouraging us and their fellow students to become involved because if we do not start with the education of our young people at that age, we have little hope for younger people coming into politics in the future.