Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

No, we shall be with our colleagues and friends in Fine Gael, and Fianna Fáil will be with its friends in Sinn Féin on this side of the House. That is what this is about. I do not know what the urgency is about this legislation. I can think of a host of pieces of legislation that need to be enacted between now and either 10 or 17 May, but why this and why now? I have great respect for the integrity, motivation and enthusiasm of the Civil Service and the public service. Could this be a crisis management response to an avalanche of work that needs to be addressed, which at present requires to be enacted through primary legislation in this House? Because of time constraints are they looking for a "Fermoy bypass" with or without a toll? Perhaps this is the manner that effective, efficient and well-motivated public servants have decided we may comply with European requirements. If this is the political equivalent of the Fermoy bypass, the democratic toll will be enormous. If in the next two or three years we are asked to amend the treaties of the European Union, either by enacting a new constitutional treaty or some variation of it, that will provide for the admission of Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania and perhaps one or two other countries, which we need a treaty for, the Government is giving, in the parlance of the Provos of west Belfast, an entire golfbag of baseball bats to beat around the heads of democrats in this country. They will see, that in the name of Europe democratic accountability and responsibility has been stripped out of the Dáil for indictable offences that can now be determined by people who are not accountable to anybody. There is nothing wrong with people not being accountable to anybody — they are accountable to their Minister or the Secretary General of the Department or to their employer — but they are purporting to recommend a series of measures, which in turn will be rubber-stamped by way of statutory instruments. These in turn, can affect the lives of individuals.

The history of this State was based upon the tradition and the sense of oppression, of unaccountable government and governance, over which the Irish people had no control. We learned that lesson and our near neighbours, which had to cede independence to us, learned it in spades. Why are we reversing that tradition and that history? Why are we doing it at a time when we need to build confidence and a new sense of narrative about why the European Union is such a good thing? It needs more democratic accountability. It needs more openness and reference back to this Chamber so as to give it a validity which memories of the Second World War can no longer provide. I cannot understand why the Minister of State, of all people, has given credence to this measure. The people who have to implement these statutory instruments do not need to be re-elected, but the Minister of State does and so do the rest of us. Therefore, as one elected representative speaking to another, I ask the Minister of State to reconsider this measure.

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