Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is right because the only point on which I would agree with him is that this has been a long road. I am not going to repeat the points ad nauseam. The Minister of State's understanding of what our amendments meant is fundamentally flawed. The fact is that all he has relied upon is the Attorney General's advice, which we cannot see. The latter is a bit "old hat" now and is the perennial excuse for absolutely everything. It is the great opt-out to allow the Government to get whatever it wants. That is not really satisfactory at all. Nothing that the Minister of State said has changed my mind, no more than anything that I have said has probably changed his.

The other matter on which I will agree with him is that our amendments would not mean the end of the public services card. He is 100% right. It would not be the end of the public services identity. All of those things will continue to exist. Our amendments would just provide a simple opt-out. That is all that is involved. It is not something that is desirable, it is something that is necessary. Without it, the whole system is illegal. I find it incredible that the Government and Fianna Fáil are rejecting our chance to make this Bill legal. We are offering them a rope to climb out of the hole and I just cannot believe that they are not accepting it.

Sadly, history will probably tell the story on that. I remind the Minister of State that the excuse to the effect that everything is grand and that it has all been checked is the same one that was used in respect of the data retention regime, which turned out to be not legally robust at all. I am very sorry to say that this Bill will go the same way if we do not revert to the position the Dáil adopted originally.

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