Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I want to add my voice to that. I raised the issue of the legislation being rushed in the context of the Second Stage debate, and the Minister of State refuted that and said there had been ongoing consultation over the past year with all sorts of stakeholders. We are not stakeholders; we are legislators. That is the point. Consultation is absolutely valid with other groups but this is not consultation; this is about the final stages of the legislation that will be in place. This proves the point that this is rushed. There is inadequate time to take amendments on a Bill that has been in the works, as the Minister of State himself said, with all sorts of stakeholders for the last year yet, when it comes to the final piece of fine tuning of the legislation, there is not enough time.

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