David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It was the HSE. The HEA is another organisation. I thank my distinguished academic colleague, Senator Professor Dr. Sean Barrett, for correcting me on this occasion; I am a little addled.

Let us consider the protests. People did not protest, they lay down slavishly under it. Then, the Europeans got a survey done and it turned out that in Europe and the United Kingdom, people were astonished at our subservience. Even the Europeans maintain we were lying down, liking it and licking the boots that were stamping on us. That is a bloody funny thing for them to be saying. We did nothing. There were some marches and it was all terribly mealy-mouthed and so on. Everything has got a little rough. Certainly, it is not nice to be held in one's car and so on, but one would think the third world war had broken out and that Deputy Joan Burton had been hit with the end of a spike, impaled and her head cut off as in the case of ISIS. People have actually invoked ISIS. Come on, darlings: it is a balloon of water, it is not acid or TNT. These people should grow up and stop attacking Deputy Paul Murphy in the Dáil. It was extraordinary that the Taoiseach of the country should launch himself at someone who may grow into something but at the moment he is simply a pimple on the political backside. It is a ridiculous lack of proportion.