Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for those answers. We must seriously consider all the information. I hear what the witnesses are saying particularly about promoting public health and meeting our EU obligations. I am not convinced this legislation would require complicated drafting to ensure that whatever licensing regime is in place would have to be compliant with both of those elements. Deputy Kenny is very reasonable and I am sure a friendly amendment put forward to provide for working in those two elements would address some of the witnesses' concerns. Ultimately, it is still a statutory instrument or a regulation that will be required and will have to be based on the evidence that everybody has outlined. We have learned in the past two years that even imperfectly drafted legislation from the Opposition can put a little extra pressure on the Government and subsequently on the Department responsible to do something that probably would not have happened in that timescale if we had not been doing what we were doing. Student accommodation is an obvious example of that. Another is the microbeads legislation, Second Stage of which we will be debating later today.

Given that Mr. Gilhooley has spoken about being on the cusp of something, I would be of a mind to take on board what he has said but by way of sensible amendments to this legislation to keep the pressure on the officials so that the positive developments we have heard from everybody continue to be positive. I detect some frustration has been experienced by Mr. Gilhooly who diplomatically described having worked on this issue for nine or then years. If we are now in a really good space, that is a positive development. I would say Deputy Kenny would be of a mind, and I would support him, to apply some helpful pressure on the officials. I urge members to work with us on the committee and rather than dismissing the expertise of the Department to work some of that into Committee Stage through sensible amendments to keep the process moving forward.