Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

To answer Senator Higgins on the alternative wording, I will give an analogy. I remember when I was doing my leaving certificate I was not the most stellar student in the class and my mother always encouraged me as I went out the door that all I could do was my best reasonable effort. I fear that if we use the phrase "best reasonable effort", it will be far weaker than the wording we have here. Ministers will always say they did all they reasonably could. How would we define or measure this? In law, the phrase "as far as practicable" is, I am told, a very strong provision and it is appropriate to keep it on this basis.