Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is hard to know where to start on this one. I will refrain from saying anything about the Seanad because we will have a debate on that in the course of the week. I have to admit that over a period there has been some active engagement between the Government Whip and the assistant Whip and the Labour Whip, Deputy Ó Snodaigh, Deputy Catherine Murphy and myself. I read some weeks ago on the front page of The Irish Times that the Chief Whip had stated it was the Opposition Whips who were holding up progress on reform. We were glad to be told by the Chief Whip subsequently that this was a misrepresentation of his position and that he acknowledged that the Opposition was not doing that.

I acknowledge also that in the introduction of the Topical Issue debate some significant progress has been made but I will come back to that because the topical issues are not everything they are cracked up to be.

I accept that the Friday sittings, which provide an opportunity to address Private Members' business, is a positive development but if we were to say that Friday sittings of themselves constituted radical reform of the Dáil, we would be fooling ourselves on a number of fronts, not least because it is a specific sitting aimed at dealing with an item of Private Members' business which is dealt with in the space of two hours, with a quorum of ten Members present, and where the normal business of the day is not to be transacted. When we consider extending the sittings of the Dáil to include Fridays we will have to have a debate related to what went on at the Constitutional Convention recently when it discussed the need to involve people in politics who are not currently finding politics attractive, and not least the need to attract women into politics.

In the course of the fairly lengthy debate that took place at the Constitutional Convention one of the issues that arose was that our work practices are not attractive to people, particularly those charged with raising families. It should not be only women who are raising families. I am sure many fathers would want the opportunity to spend more time with their children but if the Government's idea of reform is that the Dáil will sit for four days per week and that on some occasions it will sit from 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. or 12 midnight and at the same time try to encourage more people to become involved in politics, I do not see that happening. Something will have to give.

The Topical Issue debates got off to a great start but recently we have found that the Ministers charged with responsibility to come into the House to address the topical issues do not turn up. Some Ministers are very good at turning up but others are appalling, given that they rarely attend. On many occasions we find that the topical issues, which are selected by the Ceann Comhairle, are dealt with by Ministers of State who have no hand, act or part in the process under deliberation. They come in here and virtually apologise to the Member raising the particular matter because they will read out the prepared script but they are not in a position to address the concerns the Deputy has outlined.

Those are the two great areas of reform the Government is championing mid-way through its term of office. As I said, I am resisting the temptation to get involved in any debate about the Seanad but we are expected to believe that following on from that huge reform, as it is described, we will have huge reform. For example, we will make the committees more effective. The Government had to come back with a proposal to change the structure of the committees, as amended in the aftermath of the last general election, because it found that the procedures it put in place did not work and that the committees were being less effective rather than more effective. I do not know where the Government is going in terms of its current proposal to take a third bite of the cherry, so to speak, and examine committee reform.

We have particular difficulties with the issue of guillotining. The Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, was in the Chamber earlier and in answering every question he told us what the previous Government had done. I will put up my hands and say there were far too many guillotines in the past but the Minister of State, the Taoiseach and the Government came to power with a programme for Government that promised far fewer guillotines. The reality is that we have far more because 57% of the 90 Bills brought before the House by the Minister of State's Government have been the subject of guillotine. What gives us all displeasure is that the guillotines tended to not always be necessary because we ran out of speakers before the point in time was reached. In other instances they were about areas of particular importance where the need to tease out legislation in great detail was obvious. Dozens of amendments to Bills have been left undiscussed. It could be claimed that we are not fulfilling our parliamentary duty when amendments put before the House are brushed aside because the Government has decided that a guillotine will be applied.

The other issue is the two weeks between each Stage of a Bill except in exceptional circumstances. Again, that has been abused. We have not seen it happening in terms of many of the Bills that have been brought before us. Exceptional circumstances will arise where it will not be possible but it is happening far too frequently, and particular difficulties arise. That is not the fault of the Minister of State. He is charged with getting NewERA off the ground and therefore this is not his particular responsibility but for those whose responsibility it is, the type of progress promised is not being realised. The reform that has been championed on so many occasions is not being seen, and some of the reform will have the effect of making politics a far less attractive career for people than it is even at present.

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