Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The programme for Government included a commitment "to tackle the huge overuse of guillotines to ram through non-emergency legislation". For the past year and, again last evening, the Taoiseach decided to use the guillotine to ram through non-emergency legislation. The latest instalment was the property tax (amendment) Bill. The upshot of that was no discussion took place on amendments and the Minister for Finance made it clear he would not accept amendments that had not been debated. Not one amendment, therefore, was debated last evening. That follows a long line of other measures. A property tax Bill was rammed through before Christmas in a matter of hours and a social welfare Bill was rammed through also before Christmas in approximately two hours. We could not even discuss the cut to the respite care grant and so on.

The status of this Parliament is at a low ebb. The Government is treating it with contempt.

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