I am sure you will. I call on Senator Bacik.

On behalf of the Labour Party Senators I would like to pay tribute to our colleague Denis Landy, who has tendered his resignation today due to ill-health. We in the Labour group were all very sorry to hear of this resignation. I want to pay tribute to him, and to thank you, a Chathaoirligh, and all our colleagues from the other groups, who have spoken so warmly and kindly about Denis's time here, and have paid such nice tributes to him. Clearly, as someone who served with him in the Seanad since 2011, I am well aware of all of the work he has done, of his long career in local government, the pride he took in local government, the huge amount of energy and effort he put into maintaining close connections with councillors and the huge work he did on their behalf. Senator Boyhan has spoken very strongly about that. I pay tribute to his work through the Local Authorities Members Association, LAMA, his work as a trade union representative, which I thank my colleagues for remembering, and the strong advocacy in which he engaged for those involved in local government. I know that Dennis will continue to remain active in the Labour Party, and I am glad he will. On behalf of the Labour group, I wish him and his family very well in the future and say again how sorry we are that he has decided to resign.

I also pay tribute to the former Tánaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, for her work, in particular the huge amount of work she did on pioneering legislation around sex offences and domestic violence. Committee Stage of the Domestic Violence Bill 2017 will be taken tonight in the Seanad. She was a strong champion for equality, for women's rights in particular, and it was good to work with her. Having said that, her position had become untenable. As the Labour Party leader Deputy Brendan Howlin said yesterday, it became untenable for her to continue, given the revelations that had come out.

I also note the role of Deputy Alan Kelly in pursuing the truth through parliamentary questions, getting only obstructionism and a drip-feed of answers from the Department of Justice and Equality. If the Department had been more open and the answers had been forthcoming, we would never have had the unedifying spectacle we have had in recent days, of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin seeking truth through other means and raising the spectre of a general election which nobody wanted. The Labour Party played the role of an honest broker in this. Deputy Kelly's questions, pursued through the parliamentary procedural route, should have brought forward the answers that we are still only getting now. As Deputy Kelly has pointed out, there are still questions to be asked, particularly of the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Charlie Flanagan, and we look forward to getting the answers to those over the coming days.

It is vital that we get them expeditiously and see true reform of the Department of Justice and Equality. Under a previous Labour Party coalition Government, that Department was split into equality and law reform on the one hand and justice on the other. We should see similar far-reaching reform now on foot of these revelations. We will support the Sinn Féin call to invite the Taoiseach in here on that ground. We will also ask that the Minister for Justice and Equality come here in the coming days to answer the questions that Deputy Kelly raised in the Dáil.

I too want to be associated with the kind and good wishes to our former colleague, Denis Landy, who I am very sorry to hear has submitted his resignation from Seanad Éireann. Denis, who lives quite close to me on the other side of the Tipperary-Waterford border, was a stalwart Labour Party public representative and trade unionist. I wish him, his family and his Labour Party colleagues the very best because he is a huge loss to national politics. He was always a champion for local politics at national level through his first role as a leader of the Local Authorities Members Association, LAMA, and since he entered Seanad Éireann in 2011. He always made councillors and local authority policies and issues a very high priority. I sincerely wish him well.

On recent controversies and the resignation of the former Tánaiste, Deputy Fitzgerald, I too acknowledge the Trojan work that Deputy Fitzgerald did when she became Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. She set up many of the institutions of the State that are now responsible for the protection of children. She introduced legislation that will ensure many generations of children in the future will be protected. She led the way in much of that groundbreaking legislation. We now understand that, since the Taoiseach ordered the trawl of documents in the Department of Justice and Equality, further information and documents have been disclosed. The Charleton tribunal is charged with examining all of this in fine detail. I believe, however, that the Department of Justice and Equality needs to be turned inside out in respect of the way it conducts its dealings because it is obvious that Sergeant Maurice McCabe has been the victim at many levels, not only within An Garda Síochána but also of collusion within the State and the Department of Justice and Equality. I am annoyed about that, as are colleagues of mine. I believe fundamentally, however, that the former Tánaiste, Deputy Fitzgerald, will be vindicated when the Charleton tribunal has the opportunity to examine, according to due process and natural justice, the fine detail, the evidence, facts and truth behind much of this.

While I acknowledge the right of any Member of Parliament to raise issues of concern regarding public accountability I will take no lectures from Sinn Féin and find it ironic for Sinn Féin to lecture my party and indeed a person of the fine standing of the former Tánaiste, Deputy Fitzgerald, when that party turned a blind eye to sexual abuse, to the families of the disappeared, to bullying within politics and still turns a blind eye to bullying within politics.