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

The Taoiseach is making a mockery of this House and of the democratic process in the way he is guillotining these Bills. As I said to him last week, there is now an absolutely clear, deliberate and cynical policy on his part that where a Bill is not controversial and has all-party support, he lets it run on for days or weeks, but if a Bill is controversial, particularly if it inflicts further suffering on ordinary families in this country, working people and the unemployed - vulnerable sectors in society - he tries to ram it through without adequate time for debate, scrutiny or amendment. He is allowing just over two minutes each for 67 amendments. That is utterly unacceptable. He did exactly the same prior to Christmas when only three of 88 amendments were discussed. It is absolutely undermining and eroding the democratic process in the most cynical way. The Government Members smile like Cheshire cats when they do this because they think it is funny. However, undermining the democratic process is not funny. It is bad enough that the Government is doing this to the citizens of this country but to refuse to allow proper debate and scrutiny of the legislation by the public and the Dáil is outrageous beyond belief. What is the Taoiseach going to do? Is he going to honour the words in his programme for Government on the democratic revolution or is he going to shred democracy in order to impose the diktats of the troika?

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