Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The challenge is that we cannot do that. If the Minister of State comes in and proposes an amendment, I cannot ask a bunch of questions and say we will look at that. We are meant to be deciding. We have 1,200 amendments. We are not going to have the same time on Report Stage even if the Government side in the Business Committee is very good to us. I do not want to have to repeat shedloads of these amendments. I would like to use Report Stage for what it is meant to be, which is for other amendments about issues that have emerged here. The list of issues the Minister of State is willing to look at and come back to is growing ever longer. That either means we have to defer our amendments to Report Stage if he does not honour his commitment, or the Government does not honour its commitment, because I know it is not just the Minister of State. What if we do not get time to discuss them? Surely the Minister and the Department come up with clear enough positions on these amendments before coming in here. If the quality of our arguments is so great, and we convince him to reconsider, that is fine, but if the default position every time is, "Oh well, we'll go and look at it", I just wonder what we are doing sitting here in the first place. I do not mean to be flippant.