David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I propose an amendment to the Order of Business: "That No. 12 be taken before No. 1." This Bill concerned deals with genetic screening, an issue on which I spoke at some length in the previous Seanad.

I also raise the business of fobbing in. We are certainly getting mixed messages from the Government. We are being told on the one hand to stay at home, isolate and work from home, but then we are also being told to come into the House because we must fob in. I raise this issue because I am in four vulnerable categories. My health is threatened and I am being penalised for being vulnerable. I think this is absolutely absurd, and talk about mixed messages.

I would also like to comment on the recent death of Desmond Guinness, who was a most remarkable man. I was lucky to enjoy his friendship for more than 50 years.Desmond and his wife Mariga founded the Irish Georgian Society in the early 1960s. They were derided by the authorities, particularly by the then Government, and made a nonsense of, but they rescued Castletown House and a very large section of our cultural heritage. We should be very grateful to them. Among the other houses rescued were several associated with my own family. I am very grateful to the Guinnesses for doing what they did. Their not having doing so would have been such a loss. The point that Desmond always made, which I made myself, was that we should say to hell with the ascendancy and the people who built these houses — one can have different views about them and they were a mixed bunch — but we should think about the Irish craftsmen, including the stuccadores, plasterworkers, ironmongers, timber carvers and bricklayers. These were essentially Irish. There is a considerable difference in feeling between the plasterwork in Edinburgh and London and that in Dublin. Dublin has a lightness, grace and beauty that are unsurpassed.