Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join Senator Gallagher in welcoming the Minister to the House and express my appreciation of the fact that the Minister has taken a constructive attitude to this legislation and welcomed, in a non-adversarial way, that there is unity on this Bill and that it merits support. We appreciate that. I heartily congratulate my constituency colleague, Senator Gallagher, on bringing forward this legislation and so competently and ably presenting it to the House and securing its passage. That takes a combination of good advocacy, good networking and good presentation. I commend Senator Gallagher on doing that with great effect. Before I refer to the content of the Bill, I join Senator Gallagher in welcoming the people from Carrickmacross to the Gallery, led by the distinguished former Ceann Comhairle, my own good personal friend, Dr. Rory O'Hanlon. I am glad to see them all in the Gallery and welcome them. It is important to the people of Carrickmacross from the Shirley Estate.

The Bill does not need to be debated again nor am I suggesting that happen. Its object and logic are that people should be fit to buy out their freeholds. In other words, they should be able to buy the freehold of their estates and not go on being subject to ground rent and possible vagaries, changes and future increases in that ground rent. It is a reasonable proposition that they should have security of tenure and freehold and not be subject to changing ground rents in the future. I am delighted to support the Bill on behalf of my group, to commend it to further Stages and urge the Minister to bring it to fruition as quickly as possible since it is in the interests of the people in the area of Carrickmacross and those affected by this nationally. I am very happy to support the legislation and I unambiguously congratulate my colleague in his first term in the Seanad for initiating important legislation. He has every reason to be proud of it.