Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend Senator Jillian van Turnhout on this very well-worded amendment. I welcome her mother to the Visitors Gallery. Senator van Turnhout has certainly proven the point that her mother was a good and caring woman who never actually used physical violence.

To go back to the abolition of violence in schools and of teachers being allowed to slap, this is a memory for most people who attended school in the 1950s. It was a dreadful experience. With respect to the Christian Brothers, and I have a lot of time for them, had no problem with them myself and thought them an excellent teaching order, we know that a leather strap was actually designed and made for them. The phrase was "six of the best". It was a terrifying experience to go up there, a little child of ten or 11, or less, and hold out your hand to be walloped. It was a colleague of the Minister, Deputy Reilly, who-----