Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)

It is not agreed to. This is the same issue again. The Executive is using the guillotine as a routine management tool to manage the legislative programme, thereby bypassing this legislative assembly whose constitutional role it is to examine and pass legislation. It cannot fulfil that role if legislation is routinely guillotined before it is debated fully. There was no need for the particular guillotine we have just dealt with because the Bill is practically completed. A guillotine was applied yesterday to a Bill and there was no need for it; the Bill would have been passed readily without the guillotine.

The guillotine is being used as a routine tool and we object to that. I ask the Government to apply the guillotine only if it is absolutely required, in an emergency. That is when it is intended to be used. There were periods of this Dáil during which we debated everything and anything because no legislation was coming forward from the Government. If it organised its programme properly it would not have this bottleneck at the end of every session.

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