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

I thank the Taoiseach for his reply on NESC. We are in dire need of proper strategic oversight of economic and social policy, in particular the connection between both, and I hope that a new legislative status for NESC would achieve that. I want to make a general reference to whether the Department of the Taoiseach is co-ordinating legislation across Government. It seems to me that this particular Government has been very slow in producing legislation. There has been a significant lack of it, particularly in the priority areas of housing and health where a major crisis is to be seen. The waiting lists and times in health are getting worse all of the time and, as Deputy Boyd Barrett said, the homelessness question is getting progressively worse. We are at the bottom of the league table in terms of the number of women who are homeless - we are the worst - and children are in emergency accommodation.

There was an interesting article this morning in The Irish Times by Fintan O'Toole. I would not agree with everything he writes but he did draw an interesting contrast between the speed at which the Rugby World Cup 2023 Bill 2017 was rushed through the Dáil in two hours yet we were not in a position to prioritise other legislation. I thought we were going to go an extra week next week to consider legislation but it seems there was not enough material to keep us here. Notwithstanding some of the objections we had earlier about rushing some aspects of legislation this week, apparently there was not a whole lot of material to keep the House next week, and not until we come back on 20 September. There will be some commentary on that. The capacity of the Government to produce legislation seems to be an issue. Is there a draftsmanship issue? Have we enough draftspeople to draft legislation? On the education front, there are Bills that have been around for quite some time. The Technological Universities Bill is a classic one. We are now told it needs 80 amendments. That was nearly ready to be passed before the last general election.

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