Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 5, line 29, after "Part" to insert the following:

""Minister" means the Minister for Social Protection and".

This amendment was linked to a number of other amendments which I tabled, some of which have subsequently been ruled out of order for the usual, bizarre reason that they are a charge on the Exchequer. It is very difficult for Opposition Members to be positive and constructive on any Bill dealing with social welfare or finance only to be ruled out of order when our suggestions are likely to incur a charge on the State. The benefit of Committee Stage is that we can still raise various issues. In the normal course of events there would be a Report Stage in which those issues raised on Committee Stage could be reconsidered but to my knowledge no Report Stage has been signalled for tomorrow. The intention is to continue with Committee Stage and to take Report Stage without further debate. I will return to the subject of Report Stage later.

Given that the Bill has only recently been published it is difficult to deal with it. I thank the departmental officials for the informative briefing we received which helped clarify one or two issues. Many aspects of social welfare are difficult to understand. There is much legislation relating to the area and it is not in an easy, readable format. I suggest that in the context of Dáil reform we devise a mechanism to provide continuous consolidated Bills so that when we propose changes what is being deleted or inserted is evident on the same page with an explanation. Such a system would be more easy to follow than is the case at present. The first time I saw such an approach to legislative change was in the Nice treaty. Someone published the entire Treaty of Rome with the proposed insertions and exactly what they meant. I found such an approach much easier than skipping back and forth through various pieces of legislation just to find out what was intended.

The amendment in question relates to the Minister's new title. It ensures that she or he is the person responsible rather than any other Minister. My intention is that the amendment would give effect to the other amendments ensuring that she or he would produce the various reports to which I referred in amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6. Two of those amendments have been ruled out of order so I will not deal with them in detail now. My intention is to ensure that the onus would be on the Minister for Social Protection rather than the Department or a committee to produce reports and that she or he would then be answerable to the Dáil.

The amendments involve certain responsibilities. Even though we accepted section 1, which explains the various Acts - we will come to the Title at the end - the Bill does much more than just amend social welfare legislation and pensions. For that reason we will return to the Title. The Minister is selling herself short in the Title and explanatory memorandum.

As there is not an opportunity later I wish to refer to citizens information legislation and citizens information centres which are mentioned in section 1. There should be an increase in funding for such centres. One mechanism for doing that is by allocating the fines to which we will refer later to that purpose. I will return to the point when we discuss fines. It is almost a moot point if we do not have a Report Stage debate on the Bill. I will leave it at that.

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