Joe Conway (Independent)

Tá an feachtas don Uachtarántacht faoi lán-seol agus tá sé tugtha faoi dearadh agam nach bhfuil á lán de na ráitis agus idirghabhálacha atá ag teacht uaidh daoine éagsúla ró-ghalánta. I am just concerned from observing the presidential campaign that a lot of the discourse is being degraded into what I would call fairly unseemly contributions. Here we are in a republic that is, technically, more than 100 years old, and in the throes of a presidential campaign we are still drawing attention to the religion and the Orange Order proclivities of one of the candidate’s families. In a republic, that should not be the way we carry on. A person's religion, or non-religion for that matter, should not come into it at all. It coarsens the presidential debate when people carry on like that.

There is a series of programmes on BBC radio called "In Our Time", hosted by Melvyn Bragg, and one of the most recent programmes was about civility and, loosely described, if I remember it correctly, civility is the way we interchange with people we disagree with and do it in the proper way. In many instances we do lose civility in the way we debate things, and a lot of that was shown here in the past couple of weeks in relation to the nominations process. There is very little time left but I hope that people stand back and look at themselves and their contributions and the way they treat their opponents.

We had a brief reference to European neutrality. I profoundly disagree with Senators Clonan and Keogan, my Independent colleagues, and the way they look at the triple lock and neutrality. However, I hope we will not be tearing the eyes out of each other. It is very important that when that debate goes ahead, as it will do over the next few weeks and months, we approach it in a logical, clear-eyed and civil way