Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCeann Comhairle. I will be relatively brief, but I need to respond to what the Minister has said. I congratulate him on answering a question we did not ask. We did not say the legislation was rushed.

A number of us specifically said that putting 175 pages of amendments into three hours was rushed. That is what we said. I want to back up what has been said about the overall process. When we did pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill, not only were the vast bulk of our recommendations not taken on board, in terms of Committee Stage and the 120 hours – I join with the comments on how Deputy Matthews chaired those sessions very well and that the process was very satisfactory in terms of the amount of time and scrutiny put in - it was unfortunate that we rarely saw the Minister during that process.

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