Before the House adjourns, may I offer the House a brief explanation of how it is that we are rising earlier than Standing Orders provide? It was unforeseeable—at least I did not foresee—that this debate would take so little time. Normally, a debate on a Local Government Estimate could be relied on to last for days. As anyone can see, the House is only thinly attended in the wake of the by-election and that is essentially the reason why Deputies, who, were they here might offer, are not now offering and why the debate is coming to a premature close. I can assure the House and anyone paying attention to the work of the House that we have plenty of tough, contentious business which we will be starting next week. I hope it will be recognised that the House has clocked in hundreds of hours of overtime over and above its ordinary stint in the months prior to the long recess.
Business of Dáil.
In case the House might misunderstand the situation, the Parliamentary Secretary will accept that other than one speaker, apart from the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary, all other speakers were from this side of the House.
I accept that the Opposition provided more speakers than we did but it is not true that there was only one Government speaker apart from the Minister. My own recollection is that at least Deputy H. P. Dockrell and Deputy O'Brien spoke.
The Dáil adjourned at 12.20 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 18th November, 1975.