I second Senator Clifford-Lee's amendment. I fully endorse what Senator McDowell said about the crisis in Syria, particularly in respect of Turkey, the US and what is happening to the Kurdish people, who down through the centuries have unfortunately been abandoned by their allies. That is the historic truth of the matter.

I agree with what Senator Craughwell said about so-called social media. He was making an excellent point until he said his face was being used to attract females.

I thank the Senator. I never knew he cared.

That is only a flippant comment. I am sure the Senator is very attractive to some women.

What I wanted to address in the realm of social media is the volume of intimidation that happens on a daily basis. We do not have laws to do anything about this. On a number of occasions I have raised in this House what happened to a man named Eamonn Jackson from my area. That continues to happen because we do not have laws in place to prevent that from happening to him. I do not intend revisiting the case but I will come back to it if something does not happen regarding what is being carried out by so-called concerned animal welfare people and what they are doing to that man and to his family, and what they are costing him economically and health wise.

I call on the Leader to arrange at an early date a debate on the infrastructural deficit that is a reality for people who live north of a line between Sligo and Dublin. I instanced here previously the fact that if one looks at a railway map from the 1920s, the entire 32 counties of this island were covered by the rail network, and nobody was further than 20 minutes from a station. That was at a time people had to rely on bicycles, donkeys and carts or horses and traps to get to those stations. It is troubling that looking at a map of the rail network nowadays, it is clear the area above the line I referred to has been abandoned by the State through the decades. It is more troubling that if one looks at the motorway infrastructure in place, there is almost an exactly parallel deficit. It is time this was addressed urgently.

The carbon tax was introduced for good reasons. However, all it has achieved for the people from the part of the country I come from is they have to pay an extra 4 cent for their diesel, while making the same journey and emitting the same volume of carbon as they did the day before this carbon tax was introduced. This morning, for example, it took me 58 minutes to get from Blanchardstown to Leinster House. If we were real about trying to tackle carbon emissions and the global warming resulting from cars, we should at least have a park-and-ride system in operation so one can get from Blanchardstown to the city centre, either with a light rail network or a bus network. One would get from Blanchardstown to here in ten minutes if the proper infrastructure was in place. It is time we got real with the deficit in infrastructure in this country, particularly in the area I referred to previously.

I agree with Senator Wilson about the matter of infrastructure. As somebody who does not drive and uses the train on a daily basis both to get to the House from Clare and to come in from Maynooth in the morning, the more public transport infrastructure we have, the better. It is good for everyone, it is good for the environment and so on.

We need to have some sort of review of security at the gates of Leinster House. I encourage and support anybody's right to protest, but we had a situation where Members could not drive through either the Kildare Street gate or the Merrion Square gate because of protests last week. According to the law, Members of the Oireachtas should be able to freely come to work in the Dáil and the Seanad and go from work. Last week, An Garda Síochána was not in a position to uphold that, which is not good enough. There have been protests in this area with thousands of people outside the gates of Leinster House, and yet people were able to come and go in their cars. The situation that happened last week should not have happened. People who had childcare commitments, medical commitments and family commitments could not get home. I understand some Members did not get home until 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. because they could not drive through the gates of Leinster House.

Protest is important and critical in this country and throughout the world, but it is also important that people can get in and out of Leinster House and go home. If the protests were even notified, perhaps people would not have driven to work or they might have left their cars elsewhere. That situation was not acceptable and the Garda Commissioner needs to review this because it is honestly not fair on the Members and the staff who work here and use the car parks. It is also not fair on their families and loved ones if people are not able to honour childcare commitments by picking children up from crèches or childminders and so on. That was emphasised to me when I saw people were not able to get into the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to conduct negotiations on Monday. That was also a regrettable situation. There needs to be some sort of a review.