Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister his kind words on my appointment as the Fianna Fáil Party spokesperson on agriculture and community. I look forward to many a debate with the Minister. I can guarantee him that when I agree I will say that I agree. I will not oppose for the sake of opposing. However, when I disagree, I will be equally blunt and I will say I disagree.

I welcome the approach the Minister is taking to this Bill and I hear from my colleagues in the Seanad that the debate in that House was open, comprehensive and brought about improvements and changes. I hope that when we reach Committee Stage and consider the detail section by section, the Minister will give whatever time it takes to go through the Bill from A to Z. I have often said that if we are short on time in this House I would rather see curtailment of the Second Stage debate than Committee Stage.

At the end of the day what will count in the court of law and what is paramount there is the wording in the Acts that we enact in this House. I presume what we say on Second Stage may be read by judges, but they must judge by the words in the Acts. Regardless of how good the drafters are or how good the Minister is, the essence of creating good legislation is to go through it and use the Opposition to put all the contrary arguments to ascertain if the Bill contains flaws. If having debated a point and put the case that may have been raised with us and if I am satisfied then that in all reasonable cases what the Minister is proposing is reasonable - we heard, for example, the legal advices he gets on the meaning of words, sentences and provisions - then we will accept it.

Having been involved in legislation for many years, I recognise there are two dangers and it is very hard to get it perfectly right. One danger is to over-provide for of the most bizarre unlikely possibilities and tie up the legislation in all sorts of knots. The other one is that something that appears reasonably innocuous can take on a life of its own once the legislation is passed. It is important to do what the Government proposed we should do at the outset of this Dáil, which is to be an interactive Legislature that considers in detail the legislation we pass. It should not be a case of a Minister coming in and having the debate by rote, perhaps guillotining it and then doing what the Government intended without listing. Legislation passed in that way tends to catch up with itself. I know the Minister and I recognise that he did not operate in that way in the Seanad. I hope that, as he said himself, this will continue in the Dáil in order to get good legislation.

Obviously we are not going to oppose the Bill in principle and we will be supporting it on Second Stage. It started approximately five years ago - it takes about five years to develop major legislation. As the Minister said, in order for it to be good, it requires considerable consultation and therefore we will support the principle of the legislation. When we come to the Committee Stage we will go through every section. If there are issues with the section we will debate it in detail and we will see where we go from there.

I welcome the principle of the Bill because the gathering together in modern legislation of such fundamental legislation is very important. For practitioners going back to legislation from 1911 is bizarre. The previous Government went back to the 1500s and 1600s getting rid of old legislation. We need to continue aggressively to modernise our legislation and to make it accessible to people. The idea of consolidating what was contained in old Acts in order to get it in one piece of legislation makes it much better. The Bill contains many good new provisions as well as making older legislation more accessible.

We are discussing protected animals and basically wildlife is still an issue for the national parks and wildlife service. The Bill basically deals with what we call domestic animals.

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