Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete subsection (f) the Chairman of the Joint Committee shall be Senator Pádraig Ó Céidigh;

This amendment proposes to remove subsection (f) from the motion. I do not dispute the majority of what the Minister said. He spoke to many of us by telephone last Wednesday when he outlined the overall composition of the committee. We accepted him on his word and we had no objection to it. The first we heard about the appointment of the Senator to the position of chairman of the committee was on the front pages of the Sunday Independent. That was not discussed or mentioned to any of us. I made two points earlier in Leaders' Questions and I will make them again now. The first is that this is a breach of ordinary procedure for committees in electing their own chairmen. It is also an attempt by Government - supported by Fianna Fáil - to determine one of the four Seanad nominees separately from the Seanad. Those are the issues of contention. All the Minister has to do is accept the Sinn Féin amendment and allow the ordinary procedures to prevail, remove subsection (f)and we will support this and move on.

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