Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This is a very important debate. I queried the description of this Bill as a technical Bill at the Business Committee, where it was originally suggested the Bill be taken all in one go, through all Stages, without pre-legislative scrutiny. The argument put forward was that it was a technical Bill and, therefore, it was justified to short-circuit the normal legislative process. Any short-circuiting of the legislative process, for almost any reason, must immediately raise questions, to which answers must be given. Sometimes it is justified, and I am not casting aspersions, but we must always check these things. A Bill that extends the loan capacity of the Irish Film Board by €200 million is definitely not technical. It is a very big decision to extend the board's loan capacity.

I accept that the annual allocation of money is decided as a budgetary matter. We have had these discussions with many bodies we have set up, particularly in recent years, such as State agencies and so on with loan capacities. They have been scrutinised very heavily and there has been pre-legislative scrutiny and all Stages necessary to scrutinise and amend Bills that deal with this matter. Since its inception, the Irish Film Board has lent out €298 million, I think, and, because it has reached the limit, we must now extend its loan capacity to €500 million. That is a hell of a lot of money and it requires serious debate.

Given we are so close to the wire, I do not want to push the Irish Film Board and, consequently, the entire Irish film industry over a cliff of no funding - I doubt anyone does - which is what would happen if we stopped or delayed this Bill. However, it should not have come to this. This debate should have begun earlier and there should have been more serious scrutiny of the Bill. I welcome the fact that the Government, the Business Committee, the Ceann Comhairle and so on agreed to split the debate into at least two sessions, whereby we take Second Stage today and Committee and Remaining Stages on Tuesday, but this gives only until tomorrow to table amendments.

That is not a whole lot of time for people who may be watching this and who are very interested in what is going on to submit amendments-----

See this speech in context