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

I asked about the parliamentary liaison unit in June in the context of the Bills being blocked by money messages. There are 55 such Bills, including all of those of People Before Profit, which have all passed Second Stage. The Bills include the Provision of Objective Sex Education Bill, the Petroleum and Other Minerals Development (Amendment) (Climate Emergency Measures) Bill, the Anti-Evictions Bill and the Cannabis for Medicinal Use Regulation Bill.

What I am curious about is how the Government assesses what requires a money message. It seems there is clearly an abuse of the money message provision and it is being used for political purposes. There seems to be no consistency or objectivity in deciding what supposedly has a cost. Even though the Bills clearly are not Bills about spending money or raising taxes, arbitrarily the Government declares there will be costs, but there is no consistency in that application. The only rationale appears to be political. I would like the Taoiseach to admit this and that politics rather than actual costs is dictating the use of the money message by the Government.

I will give an example because I asked the Clerk about this. I asked him what Bills do not require money messages. He said referendum Bills do not. I said that was very strange because referendums cost a lot of money. Why would they not require a money message while a Bill to stop issuing fossil fuel licences to oil and gas companies, which would cost the Government hardly anything, does require a money message? This exposes the abuse, and there is no other word for it, but I want the Taoiseach to prove me wrong. There are actually no objective fair criteria for the deployment of the money message other than partisan politics, because some things do not require a money message even though they could well be argued to have a cost and other things do require one even though they clearly would not have a significant cost other than minor incidental costs.

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