Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The amendment has been rejected. I wish to speak on section 65.

As Deputies know, I have served in the House for some time. I have never seen a situation like this. The Minister of State, in the course of a long debate, accepted an amendment and all the contributions were predicated on that acceptance. Then he called a vote and the amendment was voted down. The Minister of State led the House to believe that the Government had accepted the amendment. I was formally told by the Minister for Foreign Affairs that the Government had accepted it. That is simply bad faith.

As I indicated previously, this Bill is something we have worked on in consensus. It involves 11 Departments. It is a national effort to prepare for Brexit. This was the one discordant part of it. The Opposition united to say that we did not want this in the Bill. The review section was accepted by the Government and that was put on the record of the House. Then that position was resiled from when it came to a vote. That is quite shocking and not acceptable. I wanted to make that point.

It augers badly for the notion that we are working in concert, as we have done for years on the issue of Brexit, which is uniformly badly news for this country. We have stood shoulder to shoulder together in legislative preparations and other preparations. The fit of pique we witnessed with the Minister of State deciding that, because the House divided on a previous amendment, he would withdraw his support for the amendment of which we have just disposed is simply unacceptable.

See this speech in context