SEANAD REPORT:IT WAS a travesty that the House was being asked to adopt, without debate, a motion to approve the development of the Thornton Hall "super" prison, Ivana Bacik (Ind) said. Fellow Independent Joe O'Toole warned that the procedure being adopted could be open to challenge.
An Opposition attempt to force a debate was defeated, and the motion was agreed on a vote which was won by the Government side.
Ms Bacik said the importance of this issue was that the House was being asked to sit as a sort of planning authority, to make a decision as to whether this enormous, super prison structure would go ahead. It was vital that all parliamentarians be given an opportunity to voice their views on this matter.
There was already a two-speed Europe, David Norris (Ind) said. There was the speed at which the megalocrats in Europe wanted to drive the institutions of the union and the speed at which the general population of Europe was willing to embrace in terms of onward movement.
The insistence on greater speed was profoundly undemocratic, as was the response to this country's Lisbon vote of some European leaders who should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. If there was egg on faces, the bulk of it should land on those in Brussels who had tried to bully and hector the Irish electorate. The Irish people were loyal to Europe, but when they were treated like fools and with a lack of respect, they would not stand for it.
Eugene Regan, Fine Gael justice spokesman, said he was very pleased with the outcome of the referendum, some 63.5 per cent of voters in his constituency had voted in favour registering the highest Yes vote in the country. Dún Laoghaire had done the same on the first referendum on the Nice Treaty and it had now done so on the first referendum on Lisbon.