Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No. Once the heads of the legislation are approved by the Cabinet I can e-mail everybody the legislation that afternoon. There is no problem with that. I am asking that we would not have a formal pre-legislative scrutiny stage which often involves the committee inviting experts, witnesses and so forth and delays the process by at least six weeks, perhaps more. Incidentally, we will be doing that with many other legislative measures. We are hoping to bring through a great deal of legislation before the end of the year and some of it will involve pre-legislative scrutiny. We have a large foreshore legislative measure, for example. On this measure, because there is an urgency attached to it and there is an expectation built up around it where most people have accepted that what we are doing makes sense in principle, it would be helpful if we could move through the process quickly. However, everybody must make up their own mind. I will not tell people how they should respond.