Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Of course, as today is Bastille Day, the guillotine is out. The Government proposes to guillotine the debate on any number of Bills this week as it races towards the finish line of this Dáil session. I oppose the guillotining of the debate on Report Stage of the Personal Insolvency (Amendment) Bill 2014. What we have seen is four years of foot-dragging in reaching the final stages of the Bill that supposedly is to remove the bank veto. This is important legislation which merits adequate time. Some 29 amendments have been tabled since Committee Stage, some of which are quite detailed and which potentially will lead to substantive changes to the Bill. However, the Government has allocated less than two hours for the debate. If we do the maths, that means about four minutes have been allocated to deal with each individual amendment, which is clearly insufficient. In fact, it is more than insufficient; it is an insult to the Dáil. It is also the case that specific organisations such as FLAC have concerns about the capacity of the Bill to help people in mortgage distress. It has cited, for example, the cut-off date of 1 January 2015 as being problematic because it means that the bank veto is only being removed for those distressed mortgage holders in arrears before that date. There are also concerns that the appeals system will be expensive and unwieldy. The Taoiseach is wrong to try to railroad this and other legislation through the Dáil. It is another example of poor governance and denies the proper democratic oversight important legislation deserves.

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