Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the point made by Deputies Smith and Naughten. We need a medium- to long-term approach. It does not work for anybody to keep going through cycle after cycle and I am open to meeting with Deputies to discuss it. We are thinking through more medium-term responses, operationally, but I would be open to any ideas from the Oireachtas. Obviously, the reason we are in here again and again is we have put in the sunset clauses. It is one of the important safeguards. We are here going through the full legislative process now, because we have the sunset clauses in place. In one way, we are here for the very best of reasons, which is these powers fall automatically, as they should. However, I would be open to thoughts from any colleagues on how else that could be done. The Deputy had mentioned people who were unvaccinated as well. We might have addressed that.

Deputy Naughten made reference to face masks being worn by children and asked whether this could be constantly reviewed. It is reviewed a lot. Specific to these amendments and this Bill, face masks for children are advisory.

They are not regulated for so would not fall into scope. I appreciate it is something we need to keep under review all the time.

I acknowledge Deputy Cullinane has been constructive in many ways over the last year and a half. For example, he supported the mandatory hotel quarantining Bill. However, he has been firm in his criticism of this so I will be equally firm in my response. What I have heard sounds like sloganeering. The Deputy's concerns are legitimate in respect of making sure there is democratic accountability in place but the things he has said are demonstrably false. He said we have never made any serious change to the legislation. We have made changes he looked for. I covered that earlier. One of the reasons we are here is that the Deputy and his party looked for substantial changes to these powers. I listened carefully, went back to the Government, secured a different decision and amended the legislation. That was the Bill in June this year. I noted the Deputy still voted against that Bill. He asked for a substantial change, got it and his party still voted against the Bill. This is from memory and I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong. Similarly, I understand his party will vote against the Bill this evening. We made changes and amended the legislation, as the Deputy's party wanted, but it still voted against it.

The Deputy says there is no reciprocity, but there is. Maybe he wants more and maybe we can do more but to suggest there is no reciprocity is not true. He is simply ignoring it.

A core part of the criticism from Sinn Féin is that there is not sufficient Oireachtas engagement and the Oireachtas is being ignored. I will go through what happened last week and this week. We are not even finished this week, so it is the past week and a half. On Wednesday last week, I had Seanad statements on Covid and Covid measures. On Thursday, we had the Health (Amendment) (No. 3) Bill in the Dáil. On Friday, we had Second Stage of this Bill, as well as a Private Members' Bill, and the Deputy and I along with many other Deputies took part in Oral Questions. All three of those sessions happened on Friday. Today, we had the Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill, which is not relevant to Covid, and now we are here again for many hours. That is the level of Oireachtas engagement there has been in recent days.

In terms of Oireachtas briefings, the week before last there was one such briefing and we are organising another one for this week. Officials briefed the health committee on this and other Bills. Comprehensive information is being provided daily on vaccinations, hospitalisations, critical care and so forth. NPHET advice and minutes are published. All regulations are laid before this House and either House can annul them. All regulations are published online. As per this session, the legislation falls because it includes sunset clauses and the full legislative process comes into play. Between this week and last, there have been seven Topical Issue matters on health in the Dáil, two Commencement matters in the Seanad, and the Deputy, I and others spent this morning in the health committee discussing the termination of pregnancy review. Last week, I answered 499 parliamentary questions. This week, up to the time I got the note, I had answered 212 parliamentary questions to Members of this House. I respectfully suggest that the allegation or criticism that I am not engaging with this House is unjustified. That is just what has happened this and last week. It is a pretty comprehensive level of engagement.

The core proposal in these amendments is that any regulation the Government wanted to bring through would be laid before the House for a minimum of 48 hours. It is reasonable to assume that would be done on sitting days, we would not do it on a Friday to have the regulation come through on a Monday and the House would have to vote on each regulation for it to come into effect. That is the core of what is being proposed in the amendments. If the Dáil is to vote on each regulation, I take it as given that there would have to be debate before any such vote. That is a reasonable assumption to make. I conservatively suggest the standard debates here, to go through all the groups, involve sessions of three and a half hours. If we were to implement this approach, the Government would lay these regulations a minimum of 48 hours before they could come into effect and, for them to come into effect, there would be a Dáil debate lasting three and a half hours during which every Deputy would have the opportunity to speak. There would also be a vote on each regulation. That is how this proposal would be given meaningful effect.

I asked for a note on how that would play out in terms of Dáil time taken. Since July, I have signed 171 Covid regulations, including three in the seven days since we debated Second Stage of this Bill. To have three and a half hours of debate on each of 171 Covid regulations would amount to about 600 hours of debate. If we took six hours on every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the Dáil sits, which is most of the time that is given to all legislation, it would take 33 weeks of Dáil sittings to get through 600 hours. Since last July, the Dáil has sat for 52 weeks. This measure would take out 33 of the last 52 weeks the Dáil has sat.

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