David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I must point out that we are dealing with the heads of the Bill and not the Bill itself. It is the general scheme of the Bill, as the Bill has not been published yet. This new procedure in which we are involved is pre-legislative scrutiny, whereby we get an outline of what is being proposed. That gives everybody who is interested input into the legislation, and the mechanism for doing that is through the Oireachtas committees. It is a new role put in place in recent years. We have had about ten of these so far on different Bills and it has been extraordinarily useful because citizens, non-governmental organisations and groups can have an input into legislation. That allows us to highlight problems at this stage, when it is much easier to make changes than when the Bill is formally drafted and published. It is a huge advance. I thank the witnesses. I call Dr. Finegan.