Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The amendment is a good one for the simple reason that regulation is a dangerous thing. In the dark of night, a Minister can sign whatever he or she wants if there is a regulation in place and he or she does not have to come into the Dáil. What would have to happen then is that we would have to go to the courts within six months to challenge a regulation. People might bring up something in a month's time that we might not have a bull's notion about that was in a regulation and bar going to the court there will be no way of resolving it.

Where Ministers are given powers through regulation, we have to be ferociously careful.

There is one other point connected to the amendment. When we put measures into a Bill or into a regulation, we have to watch the knock-on effects. I know of a person who has not been outside the door in 20 months because she can get anaphylactic shock. She has a young family and she is so fed up mentally. She was advised by her doctor not to get a vaccine. That person has got to the stage where she has not had a weekend away because she can go nowhere and bring her kids with her. That woman said to me, “My own relations look at me as if I am different.” Last Sunday, that person went to Roscommon through desperation, after not sleeping for a week, not knowing whether she would have a reaction, but she was going to take it, against advice, just to be able to bring her family somewhere for Christmas. Then, when she went there, she was told, “We do not know, we do not have an emergency department and we do not have the gear here.” The people there were doing their best. It was out in a community centre and they said they were not near a hospital and that they did not have the right gear. They told the woman to wait. They said they would ring Galway and that she might have to go to Galway, but they would wait to see what happened. We try to legislate but there are an awful lot of people we do not think of when we are doing things. Basically, we make them scapegoats in society. That is a genuine, ordinary person, living in an ordinary part of Ireland, doing ordinary things.

There are regulations attached to a Bill and a Minister can sign all of the different regulations without reference to anyone in the House. Once the regulations are put into force, a Minister can sign anytime he or she wants. We have to be very careful with the type of powers we are allowing. I am not saying the Minister will go crazy or anything like that, but this applies to any Minister. The habitats directive was signed in at 1.20 a.m. years ago, and it was and is the bane of our lives right around rural Ireland. These are the consequences of not having enough scrutiny in the House.

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