Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to start by expressing my support for Senator Norris's contribution earlier when he spoke about the motion he is seeking to bring before the Seanad. I was disappointed, as was Senator Norris, that it was ruled out of order. I would like to see us continue to press the point. As Senator Norris said, it is an important facet of Seanad reform that we would not restrict ourselves in the way we currently appear to believe we are. I hope we will move forward on this and I offer Senator Norris the support of the other members of his Technical Group, that is, the Labour Party Senators.It is a Seanad technical group and all of us are supportive of Senator Norris's efforts and have co-signed the motion. As Senator Norris said, we also got legal advice on it and we believe it should be possible for the Seanad to take this motion. We will be pressing the matter further and I want to endorse what Senator Norris said on that.

I join with others in expressing sympathy to the people of Toronto on the horrific attack yesterday. Like others, I have spent time in Toronto. I worked there as a student and it is a really cosmopolitan, multicultural city. It is a very vibrant, young city and it is devastating to see that sort of fear being perpetrated on Yonge Street in the heart of Toronto city centre.

I also want to express support for the RTÉ orchestras and for the position taken by the union group in RTÉ that they would remain part of and under the umbrella of the national broadcaster. Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell is right to talk about the orchestra as well. It is such an important part of our panoply of cultural resources to have a symphony orchestra and a concert orchestra. The idea that we would downgrade or look to diminish the status of the orchestras further is wrong. We should look at bolstering the orchestras. I have met with some of the musicians involved and I know that there has been real concern about the failure to hire people where vacancies had arisen and about what appeared to be a gradual diminution of status of the orchestra. I hope we will see that trend reversed and I would like to work with colleagues on a cross-party basis to try to ensure we have protection for the status of the orchestras.

I ask the Leader for a debate, after the referendum, on the issue of political purpose and our legislation on the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, and on charities regulation. I ask this in light of what happened yesterday. I was present outside the Project Arts Centre when the mural painted by Maser, an internationally recognised artist, was painted over by Cian O'Brien, the artistic director of the Project Arts Centre in what he described as an act of defiant compliance with an instruction from the Charities Regulator in regard to the mural, which was a repeal the eighth mural. It is a mural that represented a picture that has become iconic. The Project Arts Centre had been told by the Charities Regulator it had to take it down and that it was in breach of the rules under the Charities Act 2009. We need to look again at how we legislate under the Charities Act 2009 and the broader issue around SIPO and its interpretation of the same sort of phrasing of political purpose. We have seen a lot of concern expressed by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and other NGOs about how this idea of political purpose has been interpreted in such a way as to curtail and restrict legitimate human rights activities of different organisations. It is a different issue from the Charities Act 2009, but the two are related. It would be worthwhile having a debate in this Chamber as to how best we could reform the legislation, both the Charities Act 2009 and the SIPO legislation.