Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The Government has two Bills to deal with before the Dáil rises and for that reason we have to proceed with them. We will not have as much time after the budget debate as we did in previous times and we have to proceed with enacting legislation so that it takes effect as envisaged for 2010. In recent years, social welfare Bills were taken after Private Members' time on the following Tuesday and completed by 7 p.m. on the following day. This time, we want to deal with two Bills and the second arose because we were not able to find agreement on public service pay last Friday. Instead of dealing with one Bill we must deal with two.

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