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

I have very little positive to say about the Bill, so I will say the one positive thing I can think of. I wish to commend the Department of Finance officials on the obvious hard work they need to put into preparing what is clearly a very technically complex and mind-bending Bill. They do so every year and deserve great credit. They were very helpful in answering some of my questions this afternoon and this evening.

The conclusion I have drawn from my reading of the Bill is that there is not an awful lot in it. To my mind, that is the biggest problem with this Bill. I do not want to reiterate the point I made earlier on the Order of Business in regard to the timing of the introduction of this Bill, except to say that its introduction late at night is connected to there being nothing much in it. It smacks of manipulation of the debate around what is a critical issue about which every citizen of this State is concerned because of the severity of the crisis we are in, namely, the financial state of this country, and the measures and proposals being put forward by the Government in terms of offering relief, hope and a strategy for getting us out of that mess. This Bill is being introduced late at night precisely because it does not do that.

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