Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to say the same. This has been a model exercise in how the Oireachtas should work. Organisations representing the credit union movement made their views known about the Bill initially proposed by the Government. Representatives of various parties listened to those concerns and brought them to the attention of the Government which took action to change the Bill as a result. That is how democracy should work. I would be interested to hear detailed explanations of some of the formulations proposed by the Government, as there may be some issues that we would still like to raise. In general, the Government has engaged genuinely with the Opposition on this matter and listened to the concerns of the credit union movement. The Bill has been improved substantially as a result. Like Deputy Pearse Doherty, I cannot help wishing the Government had engaged with the public and the Opposition on other matters, some of which we discussed earlier today and in the last week, in the same way. If it had done so, it would have enhanced the credibility of the House and politics generally to a great degree. I hope the manner in which the Bill has been approached will be the manner in which the Government will approach other Bills in the future.

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