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

I will try to be brief. The point I want to make is about this debate and about scrutiny. There was a vote on waiving pre-legislative scrutiny. The Taoiseach told us this morning that it would take too long and the Minister went through what would be required to scrutinise every regulation. Where is the oversight? Where is Report Stage? We have 20 amendments. At best we will get to four of them. This debate is being guillotined. To be fair to the previous Government, because the House was in control of its agenda no legislation was guillotined between 2016 and 2020 and we managed. There was a degree of give and take to make sure that was the case. This is draconian legislation.

Some of us spent a great deal of time drafting amendments before Second Stage. None of this is the way we want to see any legislation being debated, never mind draconian legislation.

If there are Government amendments remaining when a debate is concluded by guillotine, they are accepted but there is no obligation on a Minister to accept any other amendments. The Minister may surprise me and be disposed towards accepting one or two Opposition amendments. It would be useful if he indicated whether that is the case. Otherwise, the House might not have enough time to accept them. The Dáil reform committee will have to examine how we deal with Committee Stage where there is a guillotine. I do not favour the use of guillotines, but where they are imposed, there must be some way of apportioning time across the various amendments. This is a question for the Dáil reform committee as opposed to the Government, though.

Like most people, I want things that work. It is very frustrating when we believe that there are things that will work or their sequencing should be different but they do not happen. That was obviously the case with air filtration. I spoke about this matter on Second Stage last week. We were watching children being cold in school in the winter months and then we got an announcement. We were expecting the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, to carry out an analysis of mask wearing by children but that did not happen. Instead, there was an announcement and mask wearing was to be implemented just hours later. That kind of approach costs public support and was a lightning rod, as there was a lack of any kind of public information or rationale that could be used to explain it to children. The message all of this sent to children was "I am safe. I am not safe. Why am I wearing a mask?"

Some of my amendments relate to human rights and issues such as maternity hospitals, curtailments and the increased amount of domestic abuse. I would like to get to speak about some of these issues, which is why I tabled my amendments. My final amendment relates to who can seek detentions under the Mental Health Act. This part of the Bill goes against some fairly significant constitutional provisions. We will not get a chance to deal with any of these issues, though. Will the Minister indicate whether he feels he can accept any of the amendments? If they are not being taken, then that is fine. If it is possible to accept any of them but they fall because of the guillotine, though, then it is a poor way of doing business. The Dáil reform committee must re-examine this matter. I have attended several Committee Stage debates where only a handful of amendments were discussed. Deputies were not really talking about them, though. They knew that they would not get to make the points they wanted to make under their own amendments, so they contributed on the first few amendments because their time was limited. This is not the way to do business, but that is a matter for the Dáil reform committee.

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