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

No, I object to the way business has been ordered for today and the rest of the week and was ordered last week. It is extraordinary, for example, that Topical Issues have been moved to 10 p.m. The debate is meant to provide an opportunity for Deputies to raise and give a profile to an issue that is topical and obtain a response, yet it is proposed to take the debate at 10 p.m. The Government made a big thing of this at the beginning of this Dáil when it changed the name from the Adjournment Debate to Topical Issue Matters, provided more time for the debate and held it at the start as opposed to the end of the day. Last week the debate was arbitrarily taken off the agenda at the whim of the Government parties. This week it will be held at 10 p.m. this evening, 11 p.m. tomorrow and 8.30 p.m. on Thursday. This illustrates that the Government's commitment to Dáil reform has been an abject failure.

The seeds of many of the issues that have arisen in recent weeks in terms of disruption of the Dáil and so forth were sown in the Government's arbitrary approach to the regulation of the House, with business changing from day to day. Tomorrow the debate on the Water Services Bill will essentially be guillotined in the evening. Any sense that the Dáil has an input into how things are done in terms of the organisation of the House is being undermined by the Government to suit its political agenda from day to day. I oppose the proposal that the Dáil sit later than 9 p.m. for these reasons. I cannot for the life of me understand the reason the Topical Issue debate was not scheduled for 1 p.m. Why did the sitting start at 2 p.m. when we could have met at noon or 1 p.m.? The relevant Deputies and Ministers would have made it their business to be here. Playing fast and loose with the daily schedule, as the Government is doing at will, is not good enough.

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