John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Those people must be looking on aghast at this evening's debate - the stupidity of the whole thing.

Earlier I asked the Minister to withdraw the Bill because it is nonsense. He is imposing a cost of €1 million on the Exchequer. He is creating a commission that will be appointed by another quango - one quango appointing another quango with the authorisation of the Minister. Where is political responsibility in this debate? Where is Government direction in this debate? Where is justice in the debate? It is not present. We are discussing one political system replacing another flawed political system. When the Minister gets three names on a piece of paper from this very expensive quango and one of them is known as a Fine Gael supporter, I doubt if he will look at the other two.

I am surprised at Sinn Féin, which might have extracted something through its support for the Government Bill and it may benefit people going through the system. However, surely Deputy Ó Laoghaire must be ashamed at what is going on here this evening, and what happened yesterday and on the previous day. The Minister has brought this Bill to the House with so many issues that we cannot even add up the number of members of the commission.

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