Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

With all due respects to the Minister, he spoke on "Morning Ireland" earlier this morning and presumably he had preparation for that. He had a great deal of material at his disposal and he shared information on that programme. The Minister is fairly up-to-date on the situation and if there are issues we raise that he is not in a position to answer, we would be very happy to accept a note on them afterwards. The Minister should be reasonable about this and I do not know why there would be any attempt made to limit debate on this by not doing a question-and-answer session, especially given the week that is in it. We need to be in a position to ask questions and it is not sufficient to say to us that he will work to arrange a briefing. We waited six months for a briefing from NPHET and we got it finally this week. It is really not on to treat the House like this.

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