Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We need an emergency debate on homelessness and the housing crisis. I spoke earlier about just the enormous pressure on people trying to find a new home when they have been evicted. We are seeing evictions at a record high. That is a very serious concern.

I would also raise another concern about the ordering of business, which is just the huge number of Bills before this House and the other House. There are nine Bills in each House this week alone. This is a year after President Michael D. Higgins reportedly wrote to the you, a Cheann Comhairle, that there were too many Bills being put by Government in the last few weeks of each term. He said that having this vital work concentrated into four weeks of the year struck him as being less than ideal and unnecessary and called for a more orderly approach to the ordering of legislation. We absolutely will support the waiver of pre-legislative scrutiny on important Bills and we have worked with Government on that but it is still not a good way to conduct legislative business. We need to see an end to this practice of last-minute legislation. We need to take account of the President’s concerns about rushed legislation.

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