Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I raised a point at the Business Committee concerning the report by Seán Guerin SC. I do not have a problem with the court judgment regarding this report. People might recall that this judgment was a vindication of the former Deputy, Alan Shatter, and parts of the report were questioned by Mr. Justice Donal O'Donnell. What is being suggested here is a brand new procedure that has never happened before. The Business Committee has not had legal advice and there does not seem to be any justification or reason why we are being asked to take this at this specific time. The proposal is to withdraw a report, that was laid before the House and to which people had no objection at the time, from the Oireachtas Library. This procedure has never happened before. It will also require the involvement of the Seanad, which does not exist in the format that would allow it to have any say on this, so I think we are being previous on this.

Second, any changes relating to privileges normally go before the Committee on Procedure, formerly the Committee on Procedure and Privileges. This did not happen in this instance and since this was first mooted, I continuously asked the Business Committee the reason for it. The only reason that was given was that the Taoiseach was anxious to have this passed. The other question was whether this had ever happened before. I am still not sure if it has but from what was mooted yesterday, I think the answer is that this has not happened before and is a brand new procedure. We should be very careful. What was indicated yesterday is that this has been in gestation since last August so why has it taken this length of time? There is a whole range of questions around this. Obviously a promise was made that the Taoiseach is trying to keep but at this juncture given the current impasse in this Chamber, this should not proceed until a new Government is formed and possibly another better way of dealing with this than withdrawing a report from the Oireachtas Library could be found as we have done before in the Committee on Procedure. We changed our Standing Orders last year to allow for notes or comments to be attached to the Dáil record. This would probably be more appropriate so that the record still stands. It is a very dangerous precedent to be doing it in this format and without any debate, which is why I have argued that we should not proceed.

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