Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not think section 21(2) covers what we are trying to do in this amendment. I take the Minister of State's point about why the Bill would exclude certain ones. The Cathaoirleach mentioned sport, which is a reasonable point. I accept that we should rethink our amendment. However, there is a difference between what is in section 21(1) and what we are trying to do here. To say that we will consult Members of the Oireachtas could just mean that all Members of the Oireachtas are notified that a review is happening and if they feel like banging in a submission, they can do so. What we are trying to do is say that the committees should be notified and, as a collective group that looks at particular areas of policy, should be asked if they wish to make a submission. That is different from randomly asking all Members of the Oireachtas, which is fine and, of course, all Members of the Oireachtas should be notified. However, it seems to me that if we are reviewing a national planning framework, every single committee is relevant, except maybe one or two. Even the Good Friday Agreement committee is relevant. All committees should be told that it is happening, asked if they want to make a submission and required to make a decision one way or the other on that. That is for the obvious reason that they are the experts in particular areas of policy. They may say that the Minister needs to take something into consideration because the committee is dealing with certain new information or new facts that the Minister needs to know about in order to put together the best possible review of the national planning framework. I accept that we need to amend our amendment to say “all Oireachtas committees” or words to that effect, but the Minister of State could save us the bother by accepting the point.