Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Frequently, there are sittings on Fridays and progress in that area.

When there is a dispute, as I used to have when I was in opposition, with a Minister about the answer to parliamentary questions, there will now be a process where there will be transparency about what happened and the Deputy can discuss all those issues with the Ceann Comhairle.

Are we sitting more often? Yes. Is more legislation coming through? Yes. Is there a commitment to reduce the use of the guillotine? There certainly is. I agree with the Deputy entirely on that. The work of the Joint Committee on Health and Children and the very important debate on the protection of maternal life will be the benchmark for how we will do things. An idea will go to committee, the committee will discuss it and it will then come back here. That will give the committee a much more important role than it had in any Administration until now. Committee reports are currently launched in the AV room and the media might or might not turn up. The proposal now is that these reports will be debated in the Dáil, giving the committee reports more power and status. Those are significant changes. The key issue is to secure consensus on all sides for change.

Bills come into being when a Minister makes a commitment to introduce legislation in a particular area. Notwithstanding that commitment, which might have been in a programme for Government, the preparation of the Bill can take some time, longer than was thought perhaps, because of complex legal issues identified by the Attorney General. Part of the process must be that where a commitment is given to introduce legislation, there must be a clear timetable. A Minister will not be able to say he or she will do work of legislative importance without having done the preliminary work. Sometimes a Minister promises to deal with a Bill by September but it has not been done by the following June. The Bill is then introduced just before a recess and is lashed through the Oireachtas. That whole process is wrong. If the process is working properly, there will be due consideration before a Minister says anything about legislation. There will be a timetable for publication and greater clarity and accountability. If we can achieve consensus on all sides on changes, which is what Whips' meetings are all about, we will have a better Parliament that is more accountable, more attractive and doing more business.

I take the point about hours. We may be moving to extending some of our days to earlier times in the morning so there are many issues in the melting pot for consideration. People ask if Deputies and Ministers ever see their families and that is important. We must have more family friendly hours in here and some of the changes that have been made and some that will be made will be helpful in that regard.

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