Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I have a procedural point. We have spent 45 minutes discussing something Senator Maurice Hayes, who is as experienced a public servant as I have ever met, said he thought would go through on the nod. There is a message to be learned from that by the Minister, namely that the Members of this House and the Dáil put down amendments for a reason and expect a reasonable response. We did not get a reasonable response — we got gobbledygook, a classic parliamentary draftsman's reply to the effect that because we did not put it in, it should not be in and that it should not be in because we did not put it in. We regularly get such a response. Members of the Oireachtas are entitled to serious responses to their amendments.