David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am appalled by the action of the ECB in issuing moves and statements that are directly intended to intimidate the Greek Government. The people of Greece have spoken and they should be listened to. It is utterly disgraceful that countries like Ireland and Portugal are not standing in solidarity with Greece but are actually doing our best to sabotage them because they know that if the Greeks get a deal, Ireland and Portugal and other countries like us would have been proved to have been wrong in their approach to the ECB. We should be very careful of these institutions that are not democratically accountable. It is appalling that Germany is ruling the roost in Europe and dictating to everybody what should happen. We have forgotten about the people of Europe. I said many times in the House that the mistake made by the European Union was to set out primarily to protect the interests of financial institutions when they should have been protecting the interests of the people of Europe. The people have spoken in Greece, they will speak in Spain and I believe they will speak also in this country.

With regard to the mail boat from Dún Laoghaire, I feel in a sense that Senator Paschal Mooney has stolen my clothes as I intended to raise this issue. I was very struck and very disappointed to hear this news. I have known this ferry for well over 60 years. I know that it moved from Howth to Dún Laoghaire because of questions of the draught for the boats in the 1830s and now it is moving back into the city of Dublin. The transport service is by boat but there were strong literary reverberations there. In the opening of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus looks out over the parapet of the tower at Sandycove and watches the mail steam packet rounding the harbour, and at the end of Brendan Behan's triumphant novel, Borstal Boy, when he comes back to Ireland, the first thing he sees on the mail boat are the seven fingers of the chimneys of the old Pigeon House sticking up over the horizon. I remember the old boats, long before Stena, when it was the Princess Maud, that relic of the 1920s, the Cambria and the Hibernia.My late uncle used that regularly and always had the same cabin 1A reserved for him. I remember after Beeching's cuts in England my uncle wrote ahead to the crew to ask for his usual porters and the station master wrote back and said: "Dear Colonel Fitz-Patrick, I am afraid that due to Dr. Beeching's cuts there is only one porter at crew." My uncle wrote back and said: "Due to the deprivations of my household and the fact that I no longer travel in the style to which I used to be accustomed, one porter will be quite sufficient. I will expect him at the door of my carriage."

I wish to comment briefly on the question of Portlaoise and Maryborough and Dún Laoghaire and Kingstown. Dún Laoghaire is Dún Laoghaire. That was its original name and it was perfectly appropriate that it would go back to it after the British left here. But Maryborough was built as a defensive force by bloody Mary, the Catholic queen, wife of Phillip II, and that was its original name. I always think of it as Maryborough. It is in my ancestral county of Laois.