Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is not a problem. There is a whole range of other issues, such as the suggestion that the minimum for political groups be reduced to five. A number of submissions were agreed on that issue.

There is a particular issue with the pre-legislative stage of Bills. I was one of those who praised the previous Government in proposing and introducing it. There was a discussion that this would be compulsory or mandatory with regard to Opposition legislation. Thankfully, the report does not reflect that. We are to discuss the matter further but I believe were it to be accepted it would hamper the workings of the Dáil and would kill off some of the innovation and spontaneity of the Dáil and of backbenchers, not only on the Opposition side but also some on the Government side, who respond to events as they happen rather than plan for months or years ahead.

I think both are required.

The key change, and one I have argued for over a number of years, is in regard to post-legislative scrutiny. When legislation is passed, it should come back to the committee after it is enacted and is operational in order to have some type of view and to see whether it is doing what was intended. This would mean we would not have the situation we had in regard to the Charities Bill, where the charities regulator was not in place for many years after the Bill had been passed. What is the purpose of the House passing legislation if it is not going to be enacted or followed through?

This will hopefully also be used to look at statutory instruments. There is a problem in that statutory instruments are often passed by Ministers but we see neither sight nor sound of them until they have a negative effect and, then, on all sides of the House, we get lobbied to remove them. If they were at least referred to a committee, it might help to identify problems in advance.

The proposals in regard to committees are welcome. In particular, for a number of years I have proposed the setting up of a coiste ar an nGaeilge agus tá súil agam go mbeidh sé sin in ann an obair atá os a chomhair a dhéanamh i gceart. The Irish language committee has a lot of work in front of it because even though there was a sub-committee on the Irish language for many years, it is now a committee in its own right and will be able to raise and deal with issues which most Deputies believe need to be given greater priority. Perhaps the Minister or Minister of State - hopefully, someone will be appointed today as Minister of State with responsibility for the Irish language - can use that committee to greater effect in order to bring about what I believe is the aim of most parties, namely, to enhance and encourage the Irish language in this country and further afield. I believe the committee has a big job of work in trying to focus in on the Department of Education and Skills in regard to the Irish language.

With regard to Leaders' Questions, it is good that the clock will be used to enforce a time limit. We have all too often sat here and seen either the questioner or the respondent going on a lot longer than I believe is appropriate. This is sometimes just winding down the clock, because we are not getting the answer anyway, but on other occasions, the speaker is going well over the time. I do not believe that is fair either to those coming after us or those of us who are here for Leaders' Questions.

I am not 100% sold on the idea of some parties not having a Leader's Question on each given day and others having two. While I understand proportionality, given that a Leader's Question is supposed to deal with the issue of the day, on behalf of a party, how can there be two of them? We will see how it works but we should consider coming back to this.

A further change I had proposed was that the explanatory memorandum for Irish language Bills would be published simultaneously as Gaeilge. I welcome the fact this is contained in the proposals but I had argued for a further change, which I thought was accepted, which was that this was a temporary step in a full movement towards simultaneously publishing all Bills bilingually, in line with what the EU will do by 2022. It is important that we are ahead of it because it would be to our shame if this House was behind the European Parliament in terms of the use of the Irish language in its legislative work.

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