Tom Kitt (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

My colleague who is present in the Chamber, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, will re-establish the all-party group on Seanad reform. He will answer questions on that in the Dáil in the next week or so and will deal with all the issues. Much progress has been made on this in the past and the points the Deputy made will be part of those discussions. We will have an inclusive approach to that.

Our informal engagement involves me, the leaders of the two main Opposition parties, Deputy David Stanton, Deputy Emmet Stagg from the Labour Party and the Ceann Comhairle facilitating those discussions. We have had three meetings and are making good progress. As soon as we reach consensus I propose to move that to the Dáil reform committee in which the Deputy's party will be involved. I cannot indicate the exact timescale but there is goodwill on all sides and we are making good progress because we are concentrating on a number of key areas, to which I briefly referred.

On this House being responsive to emergency situations and issues of the day, as Chief Whip I have been as responsive as possible to requests made by my fellow Whips at our weekly meetings, which are crucial for Dáil business. I like to think my fellow Whips, including the Fine Gael Whip, would concur with this. We meet every Wednesday and agree as best we can the business for the following week. If issues need to be dealt with and requests are made for debates, I respond as best I can. On Thursday we will have a debate on pharmacies. That is just one example. In this House we have the special notice procedure and Leaders' Questions, which today and tomorrow the Tánaiste, Deputy Brian Cowen, will take. Questions can be raised at the highest level on any issue. Under this Government the leaders of Fine Gael and Labour can raise any issue they choose during Leaders' Questions and we are examining the operation of that period. Under this Government just two parties are involved while during the previous Government Sinn Féin was involved as part of the technical group. That gives an opportunity for parties to raise issues of the day. In my view we could have a short period of notice, but I am not sure my colleagues agree. We have not finalised arrangements on that. We are looking at reforming many other issues.

On Deputy Ó Caoláin's main point on the responsiveness of the Dáil, we do our best and my approach, with my fellow Whips, is to try to be as responsive as possible on key issues regarding ordering our business. There are procedures that meet those needs, but if we can improve them, we can examine those issues during our discussions on Dáil reform.

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