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

Deputy Emmet Stagg's party promised a democratic revolution. There is no need for that behaviour next week, no need to guillotine the debate on the Social Welfare Bill. As it will not take effect until next year, there should be plenty of time for a pre-legislative phase. However, the Government will not entertain this because there are too many difficult issues to be dealt with. It wants to get rid of the budget debate and the Social Welfare Bill as quickly as it possibly can to shut down dissent and keep its backbenchers under control. That is why next Tuesday the Dáil will be asked to guillotine the debate on the Social Welfare Bill on the following Thursday and Friday, without allowing amendments such as any relating to the abolition of household benefits and pensioners' telephone charges to be vote on. If the Government was sincere about Dáil reform, it would not put proposals before the Whips outlining how it wishes to order the business of the House next week. That gives the lie to the proposition contained within these amendments to Standing Orders. They will not result in real reform of how we, as legislators, perform in this House, in particular how we hold the Government to account.

It is now 12 days since the people saw through the Government's attempt to abolish the Seanad, but the Government still refuses to listen. The reason that vote was lost was that people did not believe it was about real reform. They saw through the bluster, the focus groups and the sound bites and said all of that did not represent real reform. This is more about the optics of reform. This is about busyness, not business being done more effectively and efficiently. The promised democratic revolution is not happening. These Standing Orders are a whimper in a Dáil that will sit more hours but do less.

If one takes the list of claimed achievements in reform that the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste continue to expound, one will not find one significant change in how Ireland is governed. There has been no ceding of power from the Executive to Parliament in the past two and a half years. That is a fundamental fact. There has been tinkering at the edges. Today's alleged package of reform is about such tinkering. The introduction of a new Dáil sitting day on which no votes will be allowed and no legislation will emerge does amount to a change, but to present these proposals as transformative reforms is transparently ridiculous. The Topical Issues debate was intended to allow Ministers to come to the House and debate, but even the Government's own Whip has noted that their lack of co-operation is "shambolic". That is how effective that reform has been. The amendments before us will end up the same way, which is why we oppose them. They miss the point that more radical reform is required.

There was no consultation. Deputy Joanna Tuffy summed up that much. Backbenchers have no say in this. I am the leader of an Opposition party with 19 seats, but five minutes is all I have been allocated to discuss the issue of Dáil reform. It is an absolute joke. I do not know how Government representatives can come to the Chamber and pretend this is radical reform when its own backbenchers are not allowed to speak on how this House operates.

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