Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Gould for the distance he travelled to take part in the vote. It shows his commitment to scrutinising legislation and participating on the committee. To give him an indication of how seriously we take the scrutiny of legislation, as well as the workload of the committee, which gives us a good understanding of the timeframes involved in pre-legislative scrutiny, Committee Stage of the Land Development Agency Bill will shortly be arriving on our desk. That is really important legislation to provide affordable and cost-rental housing throughout the country. We have the pre-legislative scrutiny report on the affordable housing Bill, into which we put much time and effort and to which Deputy Gould made a valuable contribution. The secretariat is working on that report this week and it is my intention that we will be able to scrutinise and consider it next week and see if we can amend it. We also have pre-legislative scrutiny of the electoral reform Bill and the Tailte Éireann Bill, as well as Private Members' Bills which we are trying to accommodate. We take our role in this regard very seriously. The committee and all its members are very committed to scrutinising legislation.

I call Senator Moynihan.