Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When responding to amendment No. 7 the Minister of State spoke of ComReg's guidelines, but this House runs the show. We are talking about a public company and a public service. We must stop this situation where we have too many matters that come before the House and are referred on and everything is open ended. Our proposal is for the time period in this regard be tied to 42 days. Any other country that wants to do its business efficiently would not have a problem with this. We must try to move things on. We cannot have things dragged out endlessly. It takes an age to get anything done - the Minister of State knows this himself - and we have complaints in this House about it and the public are also on to us about it. Companies and unions are on to us about it too. We must make things more efficient and it is for us to make that decision. This is why Deputies were elected to this House. We are the law makers.

This amendment proposes a very small, timid measure simply not to have the process open-ended. They can consult for four weeks and then review the information, which becomes an open-ended process. How long does the Minister need to assess the information given to him? Consider this Bill. Large Bills have come before this House and have been put through in a matter of a couple of hours in an evening or a night. They were huge Bills with massive impacts, and they were put through without any great thought. This amendment is a very modest measure not to have an open-ended process. This is for the benefit of An Post, the workers and the public and we should do it in this House.

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