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

I thank the Chairman and the committee secretariat for facilitating this meeting at short notice. I want to make a couple of remarks. I accept members will not want to delay the meeting because we went through much of the detail on this matter yesterday. We are in an unacceptable situation. The Minister has known for some time that the April deadline was approaching, but instead of putting in place a proper plan to allow his officials and this committee to do our work properly, at the last minute - this is not the first time this has happened - officials have been given an impossible job of trying to draft legislation at very short notice and the committee essentially is being put in the position of having a Hobson's choice of waiving the important function of pre-legislative scrutiny, PLS, which is not about being for or against legislation but about scrutinising it to ensure it does what we are told it is intended to do, or arguing for PLS and being accused of delaying the passage of the legislation. This is the third time this has happened. In respect of a previous piece of legislation the PLS request from this committee was bypassed and a relatively archaic and unknown procedure was used to get it onto the Schedule of the Seanad. We were also denied pre-legislative scrutiny on the Land Development Agency Bill 2021, which is substantial legislation which all of us, in particular my colleagues and I, would have benefited from.

I do not think we can just let this pass. While this is short legislation, we still have not had sight of it. It was only because a number of members, including the Chairman, took issue yesterday with the fact that we were not being shown the draft of the Bill that it was shared on screen during the briefing. There are several pages to this Bill which we have not seen or had a proper opportunity to scrutinise, including a general scheme of the Bill. That has never happened in my time in the Oireachtas. While I commend the officials on the detail of their briefing - I do not in any way criticise them - this is wholly unsatisfactory.

I want to make two points on the Bill because it is important that the public understand what it does.