Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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In the drafting of any legislation, internal legal advisers within the Department will provide legal advice on various pieces of proposed legislation. In terms of this legislation, when we referred it to the office of the parliamentary drafters, we indicated we wanted priority to be given to the maternity protection section because that is the piece we had identified as needing to be acted on quickly. To be clear, I was under no obligation to do so, but I also asked that the provisions on NDAs would be drafted and attached to this legislation. Those provisions on which work began after the provisions on maternity protection were not, in the view of the parliamentary drafters, ready for inclusion in the stamped draft. It was on that basis we informed the committee last week that we would be bringing that forward as a Committee Stage amendment. I was not physically present in Dublin last Tuesday. If I had been present, I could have come to the committee and spoken to the Senator. I was out of Dublin at that point, however, which is why we wrote a letter to put in context why we were going with Committee Stage amendments on the NDA section rather than as a piece of the original Bill itself.