Pensions equality amendment
Senator Norris seconded Senator Bacik's amendment to prioritise her pensions equality Bill, recalling long-standing discrimination against LGBT employees in occupational pension schemes. The Chair then called the Leader, and a brief exchange followed about the short Order of Business.
I second Senator Ivana Bacik’s amendment to the Order of Business. It is a matter we have all been pursuing. I instanced it first during the passage of the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Bill 2010 because it was an anomaly then affecting the Civil Service. Subsequently Mr. David Parris took an action which I am sorry he lost.
A couple of days ago I received a telephone call from a very old friend of mine, Victor Griffin, the former dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral. He is 93 years old and had been sent home from Altnagelvin Hospital to die of cancer. As a Christian, he is quite happy with it and is in no distress. He wanted T. K. Whitaker's address because he wanted to write to him as an old friend and colleague to congratulate him on his 100th birthday. That is something well worth doing and I am glad that it has been raised by my colleagues. He was a very distinguished Member of this House. He was very young when he entered the Civil Service in a senior position. For a while the great poet Thomas Kinsella was his private secretary, which is a rather curious and interesting fact. He was also instrumental in improving relations between the South and the North. He entered discussions with the private secretary to the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland which led to meetings between Mr. Sean Lemass and Captain Terence O'Neill. He worked with the Ford Foundation to launch the Economic and Social Research Institute and for a long time was president or chairman of that institute. He was chancellor of the National University of Ireland, president of the Royal Irish Academy, a member of the board of governors of the Guardians of the National Gallery of Ireland and had a great love of the Irish language. The seminal collection of Irish poetry, An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed 1600-1900, was dedicated to him. It is also interesting and very heartening that on an RTE television programme which held a mass vote on the greatest Irishman of the 20th century, as mentioned by Senator Frank Feighan, he was up against all kinds of armed revolutionaries such as Michael Collins and beat the hell out of them. That is a terrific tribute to the feelings of the people for the parliamentary democratic tradition of this country. I am very happy to wish former Senator T. K. Whitaker a very happy birthday. I am sure the whole House will want to do so. I only had the pleasure to meet him once. He was a friend of former Senator Feargal Quinn who last year held a lunch party in his honour. I had the opportunity to exchange a few words with him. He is a great Irishman. We are all living with the positive benefits of the economic plan he conceived.
