Seanad report: House leader Mary O'Rourke apologised for calling Jim Bannon (FG) a liar. Mr Bannon had joined in calls for a debate on the proposed part-privatisation of Aer Lingus and had said: "I wonder would the leader be advising the constituents of Longford-Westmeath to buy shares in Aer Lingus like the way she advised them to buy shares in Eircom." Mrs O'Rourke: "Liar."
Mr Bannon demanded to know if she had used unparliamentary language towards him. "That's a serious incident. She won't blackguard me in this House."
Mrs O'Rourke responded that if she had said "a wrong word" she apologised and withdrew it. However, she told Mr Bannon that his former leader, Michael Noonan, had made "that statement and he had to withdraw it under legal redress from me. He was forced to do so and I have the correspondence."
House leader Mary O'Rourke said she would be very worried about suggested change in the method of selecting students for medical schools. The Leaving Certificate and the points system which emerged from it served this country well for entry to various higher-level disciplines, but if we were going to make one particular discipline subject to different criteria, the way was wide open, she believed, for personal intervention by those who might wish to use it.
She was responding to Ulick Burke (FG).