Derek McDowell (Labour)

I am certainly but I would like to make the point that the Minister or Minister of State should be here next week so that we can have a serious Committee Stage debate.

One of the provisions in the Bill relates to the length of time for making a decision. The legislation allows the time to be lengthened from three months to four months. This is notional. In practice it takes a good deal longer than that for most decisions to be made by Mr. Murphy and the appeals commission. The practice is that as the limit approaches a person gets a phone call from the commissioner's office and is told they have not had time to look at it and asked if he would mind extending the time. If the person says "No" the regrettable result is that the appeal is refused so the person has really no alternative but to agree.

It is not at all unusual for appeals to take several years to be sorted out and for a decision to be made. I do not blame the commissioner for that. For a long time he did not have enough staff but that situation has improved recently. For the system to work effectively a person needs to be sure that if he puts in a request now he will not still be looking at fighting it out in two years' time. We need to shorten rather than lengthen the time involved and perhaps we should look to provide for an absolute limit on the time it will take to determine an appeal.