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

I too have serious concerns regarding the way the Order of Business has been scheduled. Last week, I criticised the Government for having shoehorned five Bills into five hours on Wednesday afternoon. It is now proposing that six Bills be shoehorned into six hours tomorrow. Even worse, there are significant numbers of amendments to some of those Bills, including significant numbers of Government amendments. There are 73 amendments to the Electoral Reform Bill alone, yet only 45 minutes of debate planned.

Most seriously, six major new sections have been added to the Planning and Development (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, which will more than double the length of the Bill, from 18 pages to nearly 50, with 48 pages of amendments from the Minister. The Department of Housing under Fine Gael, supported by Fianna Fáil, created this crisis in An Bord Pleanála and the avalanche of judicial reviews when the strategic housing development process was brought in. Now, without pre-legislative scrutiny or the opportunity for Second Stage debate on these significant amendments to the judicial review process, we see all of these amendments coming into tomorrow's schedule when we have not had a chance for any scrutiny of these amendments in advance. We have serious questions about the process by which this Bill and these amendments in particular are being pushed through in tomorrow's schedule. We cannot support the Order of Business-----

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