Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 24 September 2024
Joint Committee On Children, Equality, Disability, Integration And Youth
General Scheme of the Maternity Protection (Amendment) and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2024: Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth
3:30 pm
Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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It is important that the committee hear that. Given what the Minister is saying, we can have a bit of faith that he will try to make this happen. Being a Minister and a party leader gives him a great deal of clout when trying to make something happen before an election date.
I am certainly a lot clearer on where we are at. It has demystified some of the curiosity the committee had. For what it is worth to some of the other members, this is not an unusual thing to happen with a miscellaneous piece of legislation when we try to introduce something. It often happens when the legislation is already under way that a Minister tries to introduce something else because he or she uses the piece of legislation as a vehicle to get something through quickly and introduces it on Committee Stage. To be fair to this Minister, he is being very upfront before the legislation comes in at all that we are going to introduce on Committee Stage what is obviously a very important aspect to this legislation. I just hope we get the time to do it.