Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Many of us in this House are long enough in the Oireachtas to recall late-night sittings of this sort and late-night sittings tend to make bad law. My own memories, and the Taoiseach will remember these as well, are of the bank guarantee, when we had a late-night sitting, which had a poor result. Before that we had the Larry Goodman empire rescued by examinership, which had a poor result. Today, we are having a late-night sitting which, I suggest, will also have a poor result.

It is undoubtedly a humiliation for the Government and for the country that we have been bounced into legislation at a time not of our choosing but of somebody else's.

If we look at the situation surrounding the legislation, I suggest we will be at a disadvantage when the final part of the package is negotiated tomorrow.

This is close to a fiasco. To leaked information that, as Deputy Doherty said, was kept confidential for so long leaves us so vulnerable that one wonders what will be in the next part of it. The Cabinet signed off on the Bill only three quarters of an hour before Deputies were briefed on it this evening. We were briefed for about ten minutes. The civil servants who briefed us were efficient and well-meaning but they could not answer some of our key questions.

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