Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It was cleared with the secretariat of the committee that I would make a short statement setting out the context of how we took on board the work of the committee on the pre-legislative side. Substantive correspondence went to the committee but that correspondence was not reflected in the subsequent report of the committee. In that correspondence, we signalled change in respect of some aspects which had been deliberated on at the committee, particularly around whether certain members could join an association or not, for example. We went through those heads of Bill in response to the deliberations of the committee. There was quite lengthy correspondence on 2 April and there was a back and forth. The committee had challenges in terms of timelines too. I was going to explain all of that in an opening statement but then, in fairness and in the interests of efficiency and time, I decided to focus on-----