Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

To sum up what Deputy Collins stated, we had the dog breeding establishments legislation. The Minister of State from Meath, Deputy McEntee, promised to reverse the legislation and now he is running scared from it. I had to put up with all that scaremongering for the three and a half years I was a backbencher and the 12 months I was an Independent but that is neither here nor there. The Minister asked us to be generous, accept this Bill and he will give us the standards but he is now telling us that they have already discussed the standards and we will have consultation after the fact. Who is he trying to cod?

Regarding Deputy Coonan, I did not criticise his chairing of the meeting last week. I had 32 amendments down through Deputy Catherine Murphy because she is the only member of my group on the committee. We had to operate that way. I had approximately 12 amendments ruled out of order because of this ridiculous clause that they cannot be moved because they would impose a cost on the Exchequer. The Minister is contradicting that letter because he is saying that-----

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