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

The Government has spent well over a week trying to shield the Minister for Justice from questioning over the process of selection of Mr. Justice Séamus Woulfe to the Supreme Court. As a result of the collective insistence of the Opposition that the Minister come into the House to face questions and be accountable to the Dáil, the Government was forced to put forward a proposal. That proposal will see the Minister coming in tomorrow, but the Government has attempted to arrange it in such a way that for three quarters of the debate, she will be shielded from any questions at all. That raises very serious questions about what the Government has to hide.

At the meeting of the Business Committee today, although we insisted that all of the time available to the Opposition should be given to direct questions and answers, we were willing to compromise on that. We proposed one compromise whereby we would have some time for statements and a slightly longer time for questions. The Government would not accept that proposal. There was then a proposal from the Ceann Comhairle, which we took up, to split the time in half between statements and questions. The Government would not accept that either because it wanted absolutely to minimise the time in which the Minister would be subject to direct questioning. The public needs to ask itself why the Government is doing this if it does not have something to hide.

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