Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That position was outlined to the House in October 2007. The religious ethos was not an issue and did not form part of the criteria for inclusion in the redress scheme. While Catholic religious orders ran the majority of the specified institutions, others were run by organisations with a Protestant or non-denominational ethos. Seven of the 139 approved institutions had a Protestant ethos. The Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, and the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, met Bethany Home survivors group on 16 March last. The issues that were raised at that meeting are under consideration by the Minister for Justice and Equality.

Regarding the question of how we do business here, we have had numerous discussions on this issue over the years. I would like to think that we could come to an agreement that would be in the best interests of all Deputies and would make the House more effective. Deputy Martin will recall from his long years here that Ministers answered questions on this side of the House for three or four months at a time. I have been doing some analysis on this and while the House sat for shorter periods in the past, more time was allocated for legislative work. In the context of the Bill to deal with the abolition of the Seanad, which will be published next week, I intend to provide all of the Whips with a discussion paper. The Whips can sit down with Deputy Martin and Deputy Adams and discuss how they want to run the business here. There is no intention to dictate and say this is what we want to do. I would like to think that we can use our time effectively in the interests of this being a Legislature and in the interests of what this House is supposed to do. There are a variety of options that need to be considered, many of which have been tried in the past in different forms. None of them is entirely satisfactory for Members of the House but I give the Deputy my word that we will try to be as open and constructive as we can be. I do not feel that the way we do some of our business is in the interests of everybody because so much information is piled up together that Members can feel very frustrated and feel that they do not get an opportunity to ask all the questions they would like. Let us sit down and rationally have a discussion about that.

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