Tom Kitt (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

I am more than happy to share my views with the House and to thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for facilitating dialogue with the Deputy and Deputy Stagg as we have been doing in recent weeks. With regard to Dáil reform, every Chief Whip comes into the position full of ambitions to try to improve our procedures. I certainly have been endeavouring to do that. Towards the end of the last Dáil we made an effort to do so. One of the criticisms I have of the general approach to Dáil reform is that while it is very ambitious, we have a general agreement that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. We introduced some procedural matters in the last Dáil with regard to e-consultation, which the Deputy and others supported, which involved using the Internet to allow the public to access some of the work we do. It is important that we involve the public. I would like to see that process of e-consultation, as we called it, extended, for example, to secondary schools which might be interested in some of the legislation relevant to them. Although we picked the Broadcasting Bill, perhaps this was not the best Bill with regard to young people. We have strong all-party agreement for a television channel, which is supported by the Taoiseach and the Deputy's party leader, and there are many peripheral but important issues with regard to public access to what we do.

We endeavoured to progress some issues during the last Dáil, before the Deputy became involved. One of the specific proposals related to topical issues and bringing forward the Adjournment debate to a more appropriate time, where there would be public access to what is happening. It is important we do this and that we can agree on the proposal. There are proposals on improving the procedures on Leaders' Questions. I am aware of the views of Deputy Stanton, Deputy Stagg and others and, again, we can make progress in that regard.

We proposed that a short period of notice would be given to the leader, perhaps as short as 30 minutes, which would make for better politics, although Deputy Stanton may not agree. A proposal is on the table on parliamentary questions and on Standing Order 32. At present, Deputies in many cases simply read out a statement on a local issue in their constituencies but we have some good ideas on how to improve on that. A further proposal concerns improving the Order of Business, during which much good time is wasted in wrangling to and fro in the Chamber. There are also proposals on the committee system and legislation in general.

There are many solid proposals centring on five key issues. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for facilitating progress in this regard. From my past participation, I accept we perhaps had an over-ambitious approach. We can continue with the modern ideas on using technology, involving the public and improving the committee system and broadcasting. However, there are four or five key issues relating to the Chamber that we can address. We have made progress in our last three meetings. Hopefully, we can bring this to the Dáil committee dealing with reform, the idea being that we could effectively go from this informal stage almost to a pre-agreed process which we could introduce. I will be as positive as possible in that regard, as I have been at our meetings.

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