Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)

This is part of the counter-attack. Deputy Costello proposes that all regulations would have to be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas and that it would have an adequate length of time to deal with those. In some ways I would go further because there are different ways of dealing with secondary legislation. I fully endorse Deputy Costello's proposal in so far as it goes, but there are some regulations where we should go even further and insist on an affirmative vote of the Houses of the Oireachtas before the regulation would come into effect. Otherwise there is a danger that we will have the process of having orders and regulations merely mentioned at the back of the Order Paper each day, having been laid before the Oireachtas Library, and never even noticed.

It is a start of the counter-attack to get the Oireachtas into the centre of the stage as far primary and secondary legislation are concerned. From that point of view I heartily endorse Deputy Costello's amendment.

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