Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on this Bill today. I regard Deputy Varadkar to be a hard-working Minister with good ideas and good intentions. This is a reasonable effort to deal with an issue that should have been dealt with years ago. At the outset, however, I note the Government has promised reform in many areas, including additional settings on Fridays. While this is not the normal kind of Friday sitting, I do not know the reason for the calling for a quorum by the Minister a few minutes ago. In the time when I was supporting a Government as a backbencher, the onus always was on the Government side to maintain the quorum. I do not believe I ever saw a case in which the Government side called a quorum, as it always was done by the Opposition. This may be a sign of reform or perhaps the Minister was simply testing the mettle of his backbenchers to ascertain whether many of them are present in the House today, whether many of them have gone into hiding from the budget or whatever. Nevertheless, I believe this was strange.

Moreover, the Minister of State, Deputy Kehoe, then arrived in the Chamber to propose to Members that the Dáil would not sit next Monday. While this proposal obviously was accepted by the House, Members were meant to be sitting next Monday and I do not know whether they are coming or going. They received very little notice of the Monday sitting in the first instance and now find they will not sit on that day. People must make accommodation requests and so on, as I did this morning, and consequently, Members must have some reasonable interaction and engagement. I am not a Whip of any group and do not know what is going on.

See this speech in context