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

It seems to me that the parliamentary liaison unit remit is to do everything to shut down the voices of questioning from the Opposition. There has essentially been a systematic drive by the Government to do that. The latest example of this is the refusal to allow the Minister for Justice to come to the House to address questions. We also saw this with the change in speaking arrangements. I have raised this several times but I am really aggrieved tonight. We have an important debate on Covid-19 strategy. Our party will have six and a half minutes. The Government will have 75 minutes. We will hear speaker after speaker backing up the Government line. Yet, we have six and a half minutes to put forward our thoughts and suggestions. To be honest, these suggestions might actually help the Government in the current situation.

They might provide some important feedback to help it come to a reasonable perspective and strategy. However, we get six and a half minutes. It is a joke. The Government did that deliberately to shut the Opposition down and to push certain parts of the Opposition so far down the speaking order that their voices will not be heard. In the end, the Government's undoing will be these cynical parliamentary games it is playing to shut down the Opposition. They will always surface. The mistakes will come back to haunt the Taoiseach. I urge him to stop playing games of shutting down the Opposition and to allow for open debate in this Chamber.

See this speech in context