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

The decision to rule the amendments out of order is even more extraordinary in that, on the one hand, of the 25 amendments I submitted, 24 were ruled out of order, many of them on the grounds that they would result in a charge on the Exchequer and that they would interfere with the finances of the Bill, while on the other hand, a series of amendments to section 1 were ruled out of order because they did not have any impact on the Bill. If one's amendments have an impact on the Bill, they are out of order, and if the amendments do not have an impact on the Bill they are out of order. Pretty much everything is out of order if one disagrees with the Government.

Particular amendments were ruled out of order on the grounds that they were "declaratory" - whatever that means - because they factually sought to rename the Bill as the "Financial Emergency Measures in the Banks' Interest" rather than the current name referring to "the Public Interest". It seems to me that one can justify what is in the Bill in many ways but the one thing one cannot do is claim it is in the public interest. Even the Minister, at times of slightly greater honesty in dealing with this current crisis, has said when pushed that he does not like doing this to people and that he would rather not have to do it to them. I suppose when he says that, it is a begrudging admission that what he is doing is not fair, just or good for the public or the workers on whom he is imposing the changes. He tells us he is doing it because he has to because the policy to which he has agreed and that is being pushed on us by the ECB and the troika is that the first step on the road to so-called economic stability is to protect the banks. They say we must get the banks and the financial system up and running before we can do anything else. At least it would be honest to say that is the purpose of the Bill, that it is a Bill to shore up the banks yet again and to ask public sector workers to pay for it, but one cannot even make an amendment to the name of the Bill even though it is a factually accurate description of the Bill.

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