Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

The Labour Party cannot support the guillotining of this very important Bill either, which has been a number of years in coming before the House. There are more than 100 amendments to be dealt with and as many of the more important amendments are towards the end of the debate, there is no doubt that we will not reach them all. As we have spent so long discussing this issue - as I said, it is a number of years since the idea first came forward - there is no reason we should now find ourselves in the situation where we have not time to deal with the legislation appropriately and to tease out all its aspects. This is crucially important for the lives of our senior citizens, all of whom have given great service to the State but who now, in the latter years of their lives, find themselves in a situation where they are worried about finances, the family home and whether there will even be enough money in this scheme for them to qualify.

There are a number of very important aspects of this legislation which this House should deal with properly. We do not want to look back in one or two years time and find the legislation is not working properly because we did not give it proper debate in this House. For that reason, we oppose the guillotine on this legislation.

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