Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I received the Deputy's letter and I thank him for it. To answer the Deputy's direct question, the people who are responsible for ensuring that all of our legislation, Government and Opposition, goes through pre-legislative scrutiny are those who were on the Dáil reform committee. Fianna Fáil had three very active members on that committee. I was lucky enough to sit on it myself. We made the decision on the basis that if legislation needed to be enhanced before it got to Second Stage, it would make it robust. That was also relying on us having a budgetary committee and legal representation to help Opposition Members with drafting. Those facilities have not been established yet. I am sorry to labour this point but in terms of the Dunning report and co-operation from Government, as the Deputy is aware, there is not money sitting in a budget somewhere for Opposition Deputies to get a money message. All the money in every Department is qualified and accounted for. The proposal was to have a budget for money messages so that at least, for Opposition legislation that required a money message, there would be a fund that could be drawn down and that was not earmarked for something else. We are all from different parties and the sooner the Business Committee gets a resolution to these issues, the sooner all of our legislation can move forward. The Deputy can extol my wisdom so I can help him make his legislation better and he can certainly help me make mine better. While that impasse is there, the 239 pieces of Opposition legislation will continue to multiply. It is up to us to fix it.

The Deputy is right but he is also wrong. When we go to public consultation on the total contributions model, it will be dependent on the parameters and how much of a homemaker scheme we put into the new model. That will determine whether people lose. We might, for example, issue referrals of how people can exclude bits of their working life, if they worked for two years at the beginning of it and then had a break. It will depend on us and that is why the public consultation is so important not just to me, but to all of us. When we get to this magic date of 1 January 2020 or whatever the date will be that we move to the new model, it has to be the most robust and fair model that we can produce. Our pensioners deserve no less. I do not want to find Deputy O'Dea in Government in five years' time and me beating him over the head because there is an anomaly in the next system. We want to make sure we get this right, that it is sustainable financially into the future, and that it is received by pensioners as something that is fair and that they can live with. That is why the public consultation is so important. We must all be part of it and must get as many people into the conversation as we can.