Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

We have just agreed that the Appropriation Bill, which used to be the subject of a long debate in the House and an Adjournment debate at the end of a Dáil term, does not merit debate from the Government. We are now being asked to guillotine the Finance (No. 2) Bill for 7 p.m. this evening. Many of the amendments on Committee Stage of the Bill did not have an opportunity to be discussed. The country is facing severe economic difficulties and we propose to guillotine the Bill and barely allow any decent discussion on what is happening in the economy or on the implications of a Bill that disastrously decided to raise VAT by 0.5% and send people in flight to shop in the North of Ireland.

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