Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

It is another piece of legislation to plug a legislative hole that the Government created. We already had the experience last year whereby the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, appointed members of local authorities to the Private Residential Tenancies Board, for which he had no authority. We now have legislation which proposes that appointments made within the framework of the Residential Tenancies Act were not valid. That must be corrected. We were told in the documentation circulated yesterday that this problem came to the Minister's attention in December. If it came to the Minister's attention then, why were the Opposition spokespersons not told about it until 24 hours ago? We are now dealing with the matter by emergency legislation.

I know the Minister, Deputy Gormley, has been preoccupied with changing lightbulbs in recent times.

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