Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome Senator O'Hara to the Seanad. Today is not the day for a discussion on by-elections. I came to this House through a by-election but we will have that discussion and I encourage everyone to join in. I thank the Fine Gael Party and the now Taoiseach, Deputy Harris, for choosing my home town for his first Ard-Fheis. I was delighted to see them there. If the Taoiseach brings half the energy he brought to the Department for further and higher education to the Office of the Taoiseach, I expect great things.

I will speak of the now Deputy Leo Varadkar, TD, who sent me a text message on the day he stepped down. He said to me that I had sent him an email some years ago looking for him to change the wording on the citation of the national day of commemoration. He said he would bring a memo to his last Cabinet meeting to change that wording. It was the most generous act of an outgoing Taoiseach to do that and I will forever be in his debt. I want to thank him.

Senator Kyne has left the Chamber and he being a Gaeilgeoir would say I have a hard neck to be looking for an allowance to be restored in education for teachers of Irish but the language needs to have good Irish teachers and in a financial measure we took that allowance away some years ago. We need to see that allowance restored to teachers who are teaching through the language.

My last point is for the Leader. Two EU motions are coming before this House, today and next week. There will be a motion on the measures on human trafficking and the other one will be on the agreement with Canada. Surely to God those motions should have gone to Senator Conway's committee to be debated before they came to this House. I ask the Leader that anything that relates to the EU should go before that committee. That is what we set it up for, to scrutinise anything related to the EU. I would appreciate if the Leader would do that.

Once again Senator O'Hara is very welcome and I wish him the very best. It is lovely to have a northern voice here again.