Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This Bill is in the same tradition. It puts up a headline. People do not want to be ripped off for concert tickets. Of course they do not. This, in a very populist way, suggests that ticket touting is being got rid of and that overpriced tickets and excess fees are being dealt with. The Bill does not do that. There are absolutely loads of ways around this legislation. It is really regrettable that this Bill has made the cut at a time when the decks were supposed to be cleared to deal with Brexit. Only the most important legislation was to make the cut, but the very fact that the Minister of State announced, without enough detail, that there are going to be substantial amendments to this Bill means automatically that she knows it is faulty and that it is going to have to be substantially redrafted. The Government knows that redrafting takes a huge amount of time and that amendments take forever. This nonsense is not going to progress. It is before the House to create cheap and populist headlines. When there are so many important issues to deal with, this is a bad indictment on this House. We are often told that legislation like this sends a signal. What signal does it send? It signals that this is a really useless place that does not pay sufficient attention to the job that we were elected to do, which is to bring forward good legislation that stands up to scrutiny. Instead, we bring in poor legislation. I mentioned the data protection Bill; it will leave this State liable for huge charges and might result in a convicted murder being released because the judges were not listened to in the first instance. Poor law does not serve any of us well. It is regrettable that we are here debating this matter.

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