Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I join colleagues in supporting the proposal by Senator Alice-Mary Higgins for a debate on the EU proposals for permanent structured co-operation on security and defence. Sinn Féin has always made clear that the Lisbon treaty has the potential to threaten our neutrality.

I propose an amendment to the Order of Business such that No. 18 on today's Order of Business, Statistics (1926 Census Release) Bill 2017 - First Stage, be taken before No. 1. The Bill seeks to amend the Statistics Act 1993 in respect of the 1926 census, the first census of the population of Ireland taken after the establishment of the State, in order to afford its findings a special heritage status and have them released to the public for genealogical, historical and other research. The 1901 and 1911 census returns for the entire island of Ireland have been available for public research for some 50 years and amount to a wonderful and freely available national heritage resource. The phenomenal success of making those returns available online has greatly increased the interest among our diaspora in their ancestral links to Ireland. The 15-year gap in census returns from 1911 to 1926 corresponds to the most important period in our history. The Bill will allow for the release of those data, with a special heritage status, and thereby bridge an important gap in our records.