Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Amendment to the hours of polling was part of a political reform process and I commend the Deputy on introducing his Bill to address that element of it. The commitment to a political reform agenda is vaster than that. It is only right to put those points in context.

There was a commitment to allow only two weeks between Stages of Bills, which has failed in 78% of Bills introduced to date. The Topical Issue debate has descended into farce with relevant Ministers failing to turn up in 40% of cases. This Friday sitting unfortunately contains no votes or questioning of Ministers and is merely an exercise in registering a sitting day in order to compare and contrast with previous amounts of sitting days with no reference to the content or context of what happens on those days.

The Government promised to rid the system of cronyism in State board appointments but it has ignored its open public process in this regard. In recent weeks we have seen Ministers appointing failed election candidates to various boards. I suppose there is nothing worse than the sting of a dying bee. That appears to be the rule of thumb with some of those appointments in recent weeks.

As the Acting Chairman said, I may have strayed, in his opinion, from the agenda.

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