Susan O'Keeffe (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Of all the people in this House, I certainly know about being called in front of an inquiry and I certainly know how difficult it is to get any inquiry to be right and proper and to be fully transparent. To be fully anything is simply not possible. Anyway, here we are. We have a duty as public representatives to carry out the inquiry. It has the teeth given to it by the people of the country who elected, in the main, the Members in the other House and, in the peculiar way we have, the Members of this House. We are elected representatives. We will do our best, whoever those people are and that is right and proper. Otherwise, if Parliament does not bother to run an inquiry and to acknowledge that it is our duty then it is a sad day indeed. The cynicism that we hear about and the cynicism that people have about politics will surely only multiply if we take the view that we do not have the expertise and therefore we should not bother. Senator Ó Domhnaill and his colleagues should note that if we did not bother then he would be jumping up and down in his little spot.