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

It is not agreed. I am very surprised that the Government has brought forward this motion to debate amendments to Standing Orders, given the lack of fundamental reform contained in these Standing Orders regarding how this House operates, the relationship between this House and the Government and the parliamentary system in general. We have just come through a referendum on the abolition of the Seanad, when the Government's spokespeople promised fundamental reform of how we did politics and how the Dáil operated and behaved. What we are getting is fundamentally different. Even worse, there has been precious little consultation with Members of the House on the reform programme. I attended one meeting convened in the middle of the referendum campaign, hours before the referendum debate on the Vincent Browne programme that night. The meeting lasted for about an hour and was to say we had had a meeting. We handed over 90 reform proposals to the Government which we had published earlier.

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