Brendan Ryan (Labour)

As I have already informed the Leader, we will not agree to the Order of Business. The Leader's position on this has been entirely honourable and I am not accusing her of anything else. When we discussed this informally last week, the Leader, other Members and I were under the impression this was a simple Bill to deal with the possible extinguishing of large numbers of planning permissions by the end of December. On those grounds we, in the Labour Party, were happy to facilitate the Government. It turns out to be something entirely different and this is not the Leader's fault. This is a Bill with many sections of considerable complexity.

There is a principle involved here and we must also consider the practicalities. Senator Hayes said we agreed to take all Stages of the British-Irish Agreement (No. 2) Bill last week in one session. In hindsight, having watched reactions, that was not a great decision either. There were issues to be teased out on that, which would have been better teased out in the Houses of the Oireachtas than by a slanging match between the Ulster Unionist Party and the Irish Government over the airwaves and in public. A situation has evolved that need not have evolved had proper time been used. It is a bad idea and often unexpectedly so.

Apart from my own and the Labour Party's views on it, we have no assurance that this Bill is technically consistent. We will have no chance for a proper delay after Committee Stage to allow the Minister to take seriously into account any issue that may arise which he has not considered. We recently discussed the Digital Hub Bill with the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Dermot Ahern, and issues arose on Committee stage which the Minister immediately accepted at least needed reflection. He did reflect and on some of them he did what the Opposition wanted and on others he did not. However, he accepted the wisdom in the Government on this issue was not 100%. The Government does not have a monopoly on wisdom – nobody does, least of all the Opposition.

We are being told this Bill is so important that there will be no chance to investigate whether there might be mistakes or inconsistencies in it. How do we know? I have been in this House on and off for the past 20 years. Legislation has gone through with mistakes and inconsistencies. In the last Seanad, legislation that had passed through one House came here, to repeal a section in another Bill that did not exist. As Senator O'Toole will remember, with the then Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, we had to find a way of amending it, quite surreptitiously, because there were mistakes in it. The Leader is now proposing that we should not have the opportunity to do that and my party does not accept it. This Bill is far to complex for that.

I move an amendment to the Order of Business that No. 2 be the commencement of Committee Stage, that there should be no deadline on Committee Stage, and that Report Stage should be taken at a later date. My proposal is that we begin Committee Stage and we see how it proceeds. This Bill could be taken in the Dáil next week, so there is no reason for us to rush it today. We should have no deadline by which Committee Stage should end.