Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

It cannot introduce legislation on time to ensure it is fully debated in the House. It uses the guillotine at the last minute and is now running for the bunker.

Will this practice of the Government bringing in legislation and amendments to it in the last week of the Dáil session end in September? Will we have a real legislative programme for the full year where the Dáil can deal with legislative proposals? I do not know how many times in the past year the Government could not keep the normal business of the House going and had to bring in one type of padding or another to fill the time. Then in the last week, the Government rushes legislation through. This is about a Government that not only cannot manage the economy, it cannot plan its legislative business from the beginning to the end of the year. There are incompetent Ministers who are not able to cut it in legislative debate, arriving in the Chamber at the last minute to amend their legislation and order the business so it cannot be debated.

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