Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I have dealt with many Ministers in this House in the last 20 years or so. Most of them appreciated that Ministers should try to engage with the principle of an Opposition amendment on Committee Stage, rather than playing silly games about the precise wording of amendments. Senators on this side of the House are humble and are quite happy to accept that the combined resources of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Office of the Attorney General can sometimes draft better sections of Bills than we can. When we propose amendments to Bills, we raise issues in the hope that a reasonable Minister will take a reasonable position and will consider whether an amendment on Report Stage can be brought forward, with the advice of ministerial officials and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel.

We ask that an amendment be considered on the merits of the case we make, not on the relative triviality of whether we can perform the same task of the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel in every detail. If amendments are to be considered on the basis of the triviality I have mentioned, we might as well forget about proposing them. The Minister, Deputy McDowell, should be more aware than most that technical complexities can be resolved by officials who are paid large sums of money to do so. Those of us who are poorly resourced make no apologies for being unable to draft perfect legislation.