Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome the students from St. Tiernan's and I encourage the fifth and sixth years there to take part in our annual Oireachtas essay competition - oireachtasessay.ie. They could win €1,000 for the best essay in Irish or English so I look forward to seeing their entries.

I also welcome the Estonian ambassador. Taking the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn and visiting the Irish ambassador in our beautiful embassy in that lovely city was one of the pleasures I enjoyed in recent years.

I do not know whether I should congratulate or remonstrate with my former colleague, Judge Eugene Regan, who I remember over a decade ago trolled the then Government on a practically daily basis as it was limping towards oblivion. The reason I might remonstrate with him is for proving so impressively that there is life outside the Seanad. I am not sure that is something we would want our voters to realise. I offer my congratulations to him and welcome his colleagues.

I also welcome and agree with Councillor Albert Dolan's proposal for making gym membership tax deductible. My problem, however, is not so much paying for it as actually using it once I have paid for that membership. I need to get my averages up. I think my gym visits are working out at about €100 per go at the moment so it is a case of "needs to do better" as the school report might say.

If, as I hope, the Government's two flawed proposals for the referendum on family and care are defeated, and I think they will be defeated on their merits, we need to look at how the McKenna principles are being operated in this country. Friends will recall that the Supreme Court produced a judgment in that case in 1995 that where it was permissible for the State to spend public money to provide the public with unbiased information about referenda, the use of taxpayers' money to promote a particular outcome during a referendum was an interference with the democratic process and an infringement of a concept that is fundamental to the democratic nature of the State. That is all good and correct.

Information was sought from the Government to publish the minutes of the Government's interdepartmental group meetings that were considering the proposed amendments. When one considers the confusion about what the phrase "durable relationships" might mean for court cases and disputes around tax, social welfare, pensions and allocation of family assets, it would seem desirable to find out what the 64 pages of notes and minutes discussing the consequences of these amendments would actually show along with the Government's engagements with various NGOs. Strangely, the reason the Government gave for not producing those minutes was the argument that public officials could be seen to promote referendum outcomes were the Government to publish those and that this could be in breach of the McKenna principles. That seems to be a very thin argument to make.

Of more relevance to the McKenna principles is the fact that the campaign for the "Yes" side seems to be led by the National Women's Council of Ireland, which as far as I can see, is getting about 95% or 96% of its staffing costs from public money from the HSE or directly from the State. If that is not public money funding a referendum campaign, I do not know what is. I am confident that these two flawed proposals will be defeated on their merits but when this is over, I think we have to have a serious conversation about how public money is being effectively funnelled to indirectly influence the outcome of a referendum. This is a big story we need to examine in the wake of the referendums, which I hope and expect will be defeated.