Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I understand the Minister's officials have worked hard on the amendments. As she is aware, we finished Second Stage last night. I, and I am sure the other spokespersons, got an e-mail at approximately 10.50 p.m. last night containing the list of amendments. The list came to 23 pages, which is as long as the Bill itself. We are debating them now, although, essentially, we only received the list when we arrived this morning. That is, to say the least, unfortunate. The fact previous social welfare Bills were guillotined is no excuse to continue what was a bad practice.

The Minister said the Attorney General and the officials in her Department have worked very hard for the past year on this Bill, so why did these amendments take until midnight last night? Why could they not have been published on 3 April when the Minister published the Bill? We would have had the past two or three weeks to digest and understand them and possibly come forward with more considered amendments than we have had the opportunity to do. Essentially, we will not have the opportunity to table amendments to most of the Bill because it will be guillotined tomorrow. We do not even know at this point whether it will be possible to table Report Stage amendments. There was no reference to Report Stage on the Order of Business today. It just states Committee and Remaining Stages to be taken today and to be completed tomorrow. That has to result in bad legislation.

Clearly, the Minister is dealing with people who have a lot of financial resources in terms of some of the issues mentioned in the Bill and she wants to eliminate fraud. However, by rushing legislation through the House and by publishing amendments at midnight last night to be passed by the Dáil and to be sent to the Seanad on Friday, there is a high probability that there will be loopholes in the legislation because we did not have the extra few weeks. Will the Minister explain to me in simple English the reason the bulk of these amendments could not have been included in the legislation published a fortnight ago? It would have given us the extra fortnight and we might not have needed some of these debates.

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