David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I said earlier, this is groundbreaking legislation which represents a new dawn for victims. It has been about four years in the making and there has been huge engagement on it with various victim support organisations, including the Victims Rights Alliance and others, which I thank for their work. We included a lot of their suggestions in the legislation, although not all. We are anxious to get the legislation into the Statute Book and have listened carefully to the points made. Every piece of legislation requires to be tweaked, improved and updated and what has been said today has been taken on board. We wish the agencies which will operate the legislation well. They are anxious to start work under it as soon as they can. I thank all Senators for their valuable contributions on the Bill and in other areas. When I chaired the committee, we did a lot of work in the relevant area and it is nice to see it being brought to fruition at long last.