Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I take the Minister's point on the deadline for implementing the EU directive, but even if she considers that the provisions of section 16 should be in this Bill, as opposed to in standalone legislation, surely, when the time of the deadline was known, it would have been possible to publish the Bill a week or two sooner so that the Second Stage debate would have been earlier. Why publish the Bill when one knows one will have to rush the debate on amendments in order to meet the deadline? Surely the Bill could have been published earlier? There is a commitment in the programme for Government, as the Minister is well aware, that there be at least a fortnight between the Second and Committee Stages of a Bill. It comes down to publishing the Bill in time so that there will be a reasonable gap between the Second Stage debate and the consideration of amendments.

The Minister states she is strengthening the position of An Post through the changes she is making here today and that An Post is very strongly represented in the secondary legislation. It seems a bit perverse to me. Up to now, An Post was specifically mentioned in the primary legislation, and the Minister now proposes to take it out of the primary legislation, yet she maintains she is strengthening its position. The Minister's contention seems to boil down to the argument that if one does not take out the reference to An Post from the primary legislation, then the contract being entered into is vulnerable to a challenge. I do not accept that argument. The Minister states that it might be challenged and that it could be interpreted as being contrary to this or that aspect of an EU directive. Are we not great Europeans? We in this sovereign State must legislate in such a way that there is no possibility whatsoever that anything we do could even be challengeable. I think a great deal more work should have been done on this and we should have had more discussion with the relevant staff in the legal affairs section of the European Commission, because there is no doubt that this sends out a horrendous signal to the workers with An Post, to the postmasters and to people who genuinely fear for the future of An Post. All of us have attended large public meetings. The net reality of the legislation is that the law is being changed to allow for the possibility that even the social welfare contract will be handed to somebody else.