Seanad report: House leader Mary O'Rourke said she had made a vow to slap the face of a certain Minister the next time he addressed her as "dear".
Speaking on ageism, Mrs O'Rourke said the Minister in question called her dear every time he met her.
If she had to carry out her vow she would not care who else might be present.
She believed that ageism was putting a tag on someone who did not qualify for it.
"Trying to put a person in a corner and saying 'that's where you are to stay, now, dear, because you are such and such an age' is, I think, a ridiculous policy.
******
The British were laughing at us over the Sellafield issue, Shane Ross (Ind) said. "In what appeared to be the height of arrogance in his dealings with this country, Tony Blair had decided he was going to give the go-ahead to a whole new generation of nuclear plants in the UK," said Mr Ross.
"Environment Minister, Dick Roche, had yesterday made similar noises to those which had been heard for the last 10 to 15 years about how we are going to protest about Sellafield again and we are taking it to the European Court of this or the European Court of that. It seems to me that we have nearly come to the end of the road and that the Government has thrown its hands up and said 'there is nothing we can do about it'."