Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

Throughout my responses on Committee Stage and today, I repeated that the Government must rely on the advice of the Parliamentary Counsel on the correct and accurate expression of our intentions in this legislation. It has been on this basis that I have refused to accept most of the textual amendments put forward. However, I indicated that I had sympathy with this amendment when it was tabled by Senator Bannon and I raised it again with the Parliamentary Counsel, as I promised I would on Committee Stage.

This is a good example of how a seemingly innocuous amendment with a reasonable justification — Senator Bannon made a reasonable case for its inclusion on the last occasion — could create legal difficulty by affecting the overall balance of a studied and carefully worded text. While it initially appeared to have no impact on the meaning of the section, the Parliamentary Counsel has pointed out that it could be read in a different way, meaning that the board could indicate after giving its decision what community facility or service was to be funded, instead of indicating that at the time the decision was given. This would be a perverse interpretation because this is certainly not what Senator Bannon had in mind, nor I when I was supportive of his proposal.

The Parliamentary Counsel suggested a number of amendments to rectify this problem, which would have to follow through in each case the community gain provision occurs and would add substantially to the complexity of the language, something of which I know the Senator would not approve and would not want to impose on the Bill.

The simpler solution appears to be to delete the text in question and return the phrasing to the original, which is most appropriate to our objective and that is what I propose we should do.

The views of the Parliamentary Counsel on the impact of the proposed change were precisely the opposite to the reasonable argument put forward by the Senator. I propose that we delete the words that were added and which I was agreeable to add and to return to the original text.

This is a good example of how the Parliamentary Counsel can prudently come up with, to put it mildly, meanings and that could be construed in a court case or in a challenge to the legislation to be contrary to the effects the Senator and I had hoped to achieve. What I propose is not a sleight on Senator Bannon, as if it were, it would be a sleight on me. I am simply bowing to the well argued case put forward by the Parliamentary Counsel. I hope the House will support this amendment.